Wednesday, March 30, 2011
Singapore loads the silver bullet!
In the wake of Japan's troubles, Singapore is strongly considering small underground reactors like the Hyperion product.
The Lone Polistranger has been endorsing the Silver Bullet for a long time now, and is wonderfully happy to see an entire (little) country considering it!
Of course it won't happen here. It makes perfect economic and environmental sense. Nothing remotely sane can ever be allowed to happen in this unfortunate land. Never never never never! We're Number 1 in national retarded lunacy! We're exceptional, by God! ¶ 9:35 AM
The Lone Polistranger has been endorsing the Silver Bullet for a long time now, and is wonderfully happy to see an entire (little) country considering it!
Of course it won't happen here. It makes perfect economic and environmental sense. Nothing remotely sane can ever be allowed to happen in this unfortunate land. Never never never never! We're Number 1 in national retarded lunacy! We're exceptional, by God! ¶ 9:35 AM
Puzzle
The Lower Nuthouse idiots are quibbling about whether to raise the totally self-imposed "debt ceiling" which isn't really a limit any way you look at it. Some say that breaking through the "ceiling" will cause default. This is obvious nonsense; as long as other big bond-selling countries are even less secure than this one, enough investors will continue to buy our debt. (And if they don't, Capo Bernanke will print more quintillions of Zimbabwe dollars to "buy" it in some insane theoretical way.)
Wait. Here's an opportunity for some country to become the most reliable investment. Why do all the major western countries continue mindlessly down the path of instability and poverty? Why doesn't somebody bite the bullet and institute real austerity? Why doesn't one country eliminate environmental rules, clamp down on the stock market, and invite real industry?
It's a puzzle. Normal economics tells us that human greed and pride would lead to such a result, given the obvious advantage in both national wealth and national strength. Are all officials in all governments totally bought and blackmailed by the Jewish Mafia? Or have they totally forgotten the basic rules of economics, knowing only the new Plutonomics of derivatives and swaps? ¶ 5:45 AM
Wait. Here's an opportunity for some country to become the most reliable investment. Why do all the major western countries continue mindlessly down the path of instability and poverty? Why doesn't somebody bite the bullet and institute real austerity? Why doesn't one country eliminate environmental rules, clamp down on the stock market, and invite real industry?
It's a puzzle. Normal economics tells us that human greed and pride would lead to such a result, given the obvious advantage in both national wealth and national strength. Are all officials in all governments totally bought and blackmailed by the Jewish Mafia? Or have they totally forgotten the basic rules of economics, knowing only the new Plutonomics of derivatives and swaps? ¶ 5:45 AM
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
Traps
As an old metrology-loving nerd, I'm always fascinated by simple and decisive measurement tools or experiments.
The best methods of all are 'traps', letting you know without any doubt whether an event has occurred or not. The disposable dosimeter mentioned recently is a perfect example. If the film has changed color, you've been hit with radiation. Can't be erased, doesn't fall back to zero on its own.
= = = = =
Back in August I disconnected the cable TV, and since then I've been gradually decreasing TV. I thought I was down to seeing AFV on Sunday night plus local news most nights.
Last Sunday a serendipitous 'trap' informed me that I was only watching AFV, despite my contrary impression. Here's how it happened: The digital side of the local ABC station doesn't make it to this part of town. Probably because they realize the inadequacy of their digital signal, the station has kept their analog channel running. Thus, when it's time for AFV on Sunday, I turn on the TV, turn off the digital adapter, and switch the channel from 3 (where the digital box feeds in) over to analog channel 11.
Last Sunday I tried to click the channel up to 11, only to find that it was already on 11. Trap! Unquestionable evidence that I hadn't turned the stupid thing on at all since the previous Sunday!
As an old metrology-loving nerd, I'm always fascinated by simple and decisive measurement tools or experiments.
The best methods of all are 'traps', letting you know without any doubt whether an event has occurred or not. The disposable dosimeter mentioned recently is a perfect example. If the film has changed color, you've been hit with radiation. Can't be erased, doesn't fall back to zero on its own.
= = = = =
Back in August I disconnected the cable TV, and since then I've been gradually decreasing TV. I thought I was down to seeing AFV on Sunday night plus local news most nights.
Last Sunday a serendipitous 'trap' informed me that I was only watching AFV, despite my contrary impression. Here's how it happened: The digital side of the local ABC station doesn't make it to this part of town. Probably because they realize the inadequacy of their digital signal, the station has kept their analog channel running. Thus, when it's time for AFV on Sunday, I turn on the TV, turn off the digital adapter, and switch the channel from 3 (where the digital box feeds in) over to analog channel 11.
Last Sunday I tried to click the channel up to 11, only to find that it was already on 11. Trap! Unquestionable evidence that I hadn't turned the stupid thing on at all since the previous Sunday!
Labels: Metrology
¶ 8:22 PM
Finally some guts, from the least likely source!
Wisc Gov Walker has finally picked up some balls, and has disobeyed the illegitimate, illegal, null and void "opinion" by an illegitimate, illegal, null and void alleged so-called "judge".
I really didn't think Walker was ever going to stand up for his state. Until now he's made some pretty good noises but no action, simply allowing the Commies to get away with their usual shit.
BRAVO WALKER! ¶ 11:09 AM
I really didn't think Walker was ever going to stand up for his state. Until now he's made some pretty good noises but no action, simply allowing the Commies to get away with their usual shit.
BRAVO WALKER! ¶ 11:09 AM
Why I listen to NPR, part 8
This morning NPR covered the Conoco shipment mess that I've been watching. The local media has given the idea that all local residents are hippie-ass shitheads who want their own precious little esthetic tastes to impoverish everyone. (Of course the local media doesn't call them hippie-ass shitheads; it calls them noble heroic angels, living saints who must preserve our delicate fragile ecological heritage for our children and our grandchildren and our great-grandchildren.)
NPR gave a more balanced picture, interviewing people along the "megaload" route who understand reality and welcome the loads.
Using Canadian oil production as the story pivot, NPR also discussed a proposed pipeline from Alberta oilfields all the way down to refineries and shipping ports in the Houston area. This pipeline is running into NIMBY opposition all along its route.
NPR missed the other common theme, though. In both cases the "offensive" shipments and pipelines are only needed because of modern centralization, modularization and commodification.
The "megaloads" wouldn't be needed if Conoco and others returned to the way they operated before 1980: make all the parts on-site. Instead, the corporations are stuck with a procedure that puts nearly all the labor in Japan and Korea, making huge almost-finished modules that require wildly complicated trans-Pacific shipping.
And the long north-south pipeline wouldn't be needed if the oil companies put more refineries closer to the source, as they did before 1980. Those refineries could then ship finished and profitable products over much shorter distances. It also wouldn't be needed if we had enough goddamn common sense to keep our own goddamn oil instead of treasonously sending it to our enemies in goddamn China.
Of course the more distributed supply chain would still run into NIMBY problems, but it would distribute the local benefits more widely, which tends to knock down NIMBY attitudes. When your back yard has jobs and money, you'll tolerate a bit more change in its visual aspect. ¶ 5:26 AM
NPR gave a more balanced picture, interviewing people along the "megaload" route who understand reality and welcome the loads.
Using Canadian oil production as the story pivot, NPR also discussed a proposed pipeline from Alberta oilfields all the way down to refineries and shipping ports in the Houston area. This pipeline is running into NIMBY opposition all along its route.
NPR missed the other common theme, though. In both cases the "offensive" shipments and pipelines are only needed because of modern centralization, modularization and commodification.
The "megaloads" wouldn't be needed if Conoco and others returned to the way they operated before 1980: make all the parts on-site. Instead, the corporations are stuck with a procedure that puts nearly all the labor in Japan and Korea, making huge almost-finished modules that require wildly complicated trans-Pacific shipping.
And the long north-south pipeline wouldn't be needed if the oil companies put more refineries closer to the source, as they did before 1980. Those refineries could then ship finished and profitable products over much shorter distances. It also wouldn't be needed if we had enough goddamn common sense to keep our own goddamn oil instead of treasonously sending it to our enemies in goddamn China.
Of course the more distributed supply chain would still run into NIMBY problems, but it would distribute the local benefits more widely, which tends to knock down NIMBY attitudes. When your back yard has jobs and money, you'll tolerate a bit more change in its visual aspect. ¶ 5:26 AM
Monday, March 28, 2011
Peer pressure
Standard parental line: "If everyone else wanted to jump off a cliff, would you do it?"
Our 22-year series of traitorous presidents all say Yes. In fact, they say quite openly that they won't do anything at all unless everyone else is doing it first!
Obama is following Bush The Father, Clinton The Husband, and Bush The Son when he treats multilateral support as a precondition for action. All of these traitors have insisted that we should only make war when the UN or NATO or some other League has ordered us to make war. All of these traitors have tried to get peer support (at least on paper) before acting, though Clinton went ahead in Yugoslavia without gaining it.
The principle is dead wrong, and easy to see why ... though I'm ashamed to admit that I didn't see it until just now. If we are acting with other nations, it means we're not paying attention to our own interests. Our job as a nation is to protect OUR OWN PEOPLE and nothing else. If a situation is serious enough to threaten OUR PEOPLE, then it's worth acting. Maybe economic or covert action first, maybe military action first. The tactic depends on the situation.
But peer pressure should be worse than irrelevant. If the other kids want us to jump over the cliff, their desire all by itself is a pretty good reason not to jump. It's a pretty fair indication that they know what will happen and we don't.
= = = = =
A bit later: Pasha Obama has added a new twist.
In other words: "Mom! The East River Gang wants me to jump off a cliff, so they can be more macho than the other gangs! I'm gonna do it, because the East River Gang needs to be the most macho of all!"
A sane president would have long ago kicked out the East River Gang, not sucked up to its continued macho. We haven't had sane presidents in a long time, maybe not since April 12, 1945. ¶ 4:12 PM
Our 22-year series of traitorous presidents all say Yes. In fact, they say quite openly that they won't do anything at all unless everyone else is doing it first!
Obama is following Bush The Father, Clinton The Husband, and Bush The Son when he treats multilateral support as a precondition for action. All of these traitors have insisted that we should only make war when the UN or NATO or some other League has ordered us to make war. All of these traitors have tried to get peer support (at least on paper) before acting, though Clinton went ahead in Yugoslavia without gaining it.
The principle is dead wrong, and easy to see why ... though I'm ashamed to admit that I didn't see it until just now. If we are acting with other nations, it means we're not paying attention to our own interests. Our job as a nation is to protect OUR OWN PEOPLE and nothing else. If a situation is serious enough to threaten OUR PEOPLE, then it's worth acting. Maybe economic or covert action first, maybe military action first. The tactic depends on the situation.
But peer pressure should be worse than irrelevant. If the other kids want us to jump over the cliff, their desire all by itself is a pretty good reason not to jump. It's a pretty fair indication that they know what will happen and we don't.
= = = = =
A bit later: Pasha Obama has added a new twist.
The writ of the UN Security Council would have been shown to be little more than empty words, crippling its future credibility to uphold global peace and security.
In other words: "Mom! The East River Gang wants me to jump off a cliff, so they can be more macho than the other gangs! I'm gonna do it, because the East River Gang needs to be the most macho of all!"
A sane president would have long ago kicked out the East River Gang, not sucked up to its continued macho. We haven't had sane presidents in a long time, maybe not since April 12, 1945. ¶ 4:12 PM
Return to the original
Systematic licensing of broadcast radio stations began in the '20s, and derived its legal basis from an existing set of navigation beacons. These beacon stations, something like radio-wave lighthouses, were built along the coasts to provide identifiable direction points for ships and aircraft.
The Pacific beacons had three-letter call signals beginning with K, and the Atlantic/Gulf coast beacons began with W. Running literally by clockwork, they simply sent their own call sign over and over and over all day long in Morse. KAB KAB KAB KAB KAB KAB KAB....
And now we've come full circle. Though it's no longer Morse, each AM broadcaster has returned to automatic beacon service.
The leftward-polarized beacons automatically repeat:
SARAH PALIN IS DUMB SARAH PALIN IS DUMB SARAH PALIN IS DUMB ....
And the rightward-polarized beacons automatically repeat:
ZERO ZIP NADA TAXES ZERO ZIP NADA TAXES ZERO ZIP NADA TAXES.....
¶ 10:32 AM
The Pacific beacons had three-letter call signals beginning with K, and the Atlantic/Gulf coast beacons began with W. Running literally by clockwork, they simply sent their own call sign over and over and over all day long in Morse. KAB KAB KAB KAB KAB KAB KAB....
And now we've come full circle. Though it's no longer Morse, each AM broadcaster has returned to automatic beacon service.
The leftward-polarized beacons automatically repeat:
SARAH PALIN IS DUMB SARAH PALIN IS DUMB SARAH PALIN IS DUMB ....
And the rightward-polarized beacons automatically repeat:
ZERO ZIP NADA TAXES ZERO ZIP NADA TAXES ZERO ZIP NADA TAXES.....
¶ 10:32 AM
Sunday, March 27, 2011
Confidence vs panic 2
Following up on Civil Defense.
Various "experts" on radiation exposure are throwing around all sorts of different measurements. Millisieverts, millirems, picocuries, Becquerels... All unfamiliar even to scientifically literate people, and obviously there's no agreement on which unit is best.
When you're dealing with such unfamiliar measurements, made by instruments that most people have never seen or used, there's all sorts of room for panic and fraud.
Again, back in the days of fallout shelters these measurements were more concrete and familiar. Example: Around 1962, Manhattan HS sent students through K-State's experimental reactor. We got a closeup look at the core and the pool containing spent fuel rods. Before entering the reactor room, each of us got a little disposable dosimeter that clipped on your shirt. It was a little card made of something like photo film that would change color when exposed to radiation. We were required to look at the dosimeter before and after, and compare with a dosimeter that had been given a significant dose. We got a solid feel for the idea of exposure over time, without any numbers at all.
The Geiger counter had a similar concrete sensory output in the form of clicks. You could hear each high-energy particle hitting the detector tube. No numbers needed.
Dosimeters and Geiger counters were common in schools and public facilities, and many people knew how to use them.
Now, as far as I can tell from Googling, you can't buy those disposable dosimeters anywhere. Couldn't have an informed and confident public, could we? Nope, have to leave the abstract numbers in the "capable" hands of the "experts" who are always correct ... if too high by a factor of 10,000 counts as correct.
It's the Carbon Cult all over again. Never let the peasants read the graphs, never let the peasants make their own measurements. Keep the books under lock and key, only available to the High Priests.
Another point of intersection: The great Art Robinson has been trying to restore the truth about both subjects for many decades. His efforts are finally bearing some fruit on the Carbon Cult. It's probably too late for a restoration of Civil Defense. By the time a significant number of Americans come anywhere near the French level of common sense, we won't have any resources or money left to do anything at all. We'll be just another primitive third-world colony sending coal to China and burning our own shit for fuel. Oh pardon me, Carbon-Neutral Biofuel. ¶ 8:36 PM
Various "experts" on radiation exposure are throwing around all sorts of different measurements. Millisieverts, millirems, picocuries, Becquerels... All unfamiliar even to scientifically literate people, and obviously there's no agreement on which unit is best.
When you're dealing with such unfamiliar measurements, made by instruments that most people have never seen or used, there's all sorts of room for panic and fraud.
Again, back in the days of fallout shelters these measurements were more concrete and familiar. Example: Around 1962, Manhattan HS sent students through K-State's experimental reactor. We got a closeup look at the core and the pool containing spent fuel rods. Before entering the reactor room, each of us got a little disposable dosimeter that clipped on your shirt. It was a little card made of something like photo film that would change color when exposed to radiation. We were required to look at the dosimeter before and after, and compare with a dosimeter that had been given a significant dose. We got a solid feel for the idea of exposure over time, without any numbers at all.
The Geiger counter had a similar concrete sensory output in the form of clicks. You could hear each high-energy particle hitting the detector tube. No numbers needed.
Dosimeters and Geiger counters were common in schools and public facilities, and many people knew how to use them.
Now, as far as I can tell from Googling, you can't buy those disposable dosimeters anywhere. Couldn't have an informed and confident public, could we? Nope, have to leave the abstract numbers in the "capable" hands of the "experts" who are always correct ... if too high by a factor of 10,000 counts as correct.
It's the Carbon Cult all over again. Never let the peasants read the graphs, never let the peasants make their own measurements. Keep the books under lock and key, only available to the High Priests.
Another point of intersection: The great Art Robinson has been trying to restore the truth about both subjects for many decades. His efforts are finally bearing some fruit on the Carbon Cult. It's probably too late for a restoration of Civil Defense. By the time a significant number of Americans come anywhere near the French level of common sense, we won't have any resources or money left to do anything at all. We'll be just another primitive third-world colony sending coal to China and burning our own shit for fuel. Oh pardon me, Carbon-Neutral Biofuel. ¶ 8:36 PM
Rhymes with rain
Nice column in the Spokane paper today. Observes that this spring makes Spokane look a lot like the foggy and rainy Spokane imagined by outsiders. Those outsiders also pronounce Spokane as rhyming with rain, which probably reinforces the connection.
Reminds me of something John Updike (who I miss badly!) wrote once. He observed that the Russians liked certain American authors. Thoreau, Hemingway and Steinbeck were prominent, and Updike himself was among those favorites.
He wasn't at all sure that he appreciated the honor. Why? Because Russian versions of American authors came through the cultural filter as different personalities. The words of Dzhon Apdayk (Джон Апдайк) were faithfully translated from the words of John Updike, but the Apdayk who appeared in the minds of his Russian readers was an entirely different man from the Updike who appeared to American readers. Same with Genri Deyvid Toro (Генри Дейвид Торо) and Henry David Thoreau. Even with good translations, Toro and Thoreau were different men. ¶ 11:45 AM
Reminds me of something John Updike (who I miss badly!) wrote once. He observed that the Russians liked certain American authors. Thoreau, Hemingway and Steinbeck were prominent, and Updike himself was among those favorites.
He wasn't at all sure that he appreciated the honor. Why? Because Russian versions of American authors came through the cultural filter as different personalities. The words of Dzhon Apdayk (Джон Апдайк) were faithfully translated from the words of John Updike, but the Apdayk who appeared in the minds of his Russian readers was an entirely different man from the Updike who appeared to American readers. Same with Genri Deyvid Toro (Генри Дейвид Торо) and Henry David Thoreau. Even with good translations, Toro and Thoreau were different men. ¶ 11:45 AM
Saturday, March 26, 2011
From CD to CD
Lots of discussion now about fallout shelters. Much of the discussion is an Orwellian reversal of historical truth.
Supposedly the 'duck and cover' drills and the fallout shelters of 1960 were generators of panic.
Nope, it's the exact opposite, by intention and result. Eisenhower and JFK wanted Americans to feel confident. That's why they built public shelters and encouraged the building of private shelters.
Basic fact about anxiety: When you do something that gives you a convincing sense of control, you lose the panic.
I've noticed this lately re heavy snow. Before I figured out how to rake the roof, I just sat in the house and waited for it to collapse. It didn't break, but it did leak badly, and my heart went wild. After I got the tools and the technique and the guts to go out there and DO IT, no more ice dams and no more panic.
When you have your own tornado/fallout shelter, or you know there's a public tornado/fallout shelter nearby, you don't panic nearly as much about the mysterious tornado/fallout.
Later presidents, beginning with Unhanged Traitor Carter, intentionally substituted panic for confidence, and concentrated solely on protecting their own personal dictatorial ass. The fallout shelter system, and the Civil Defense warning system, were allowed to lapse and gradually deleted from the bureaucracy.
In 2001 when the dreaded event finally happened, no part of the government responded and no emergency warnings were broadcast. The Professional Panicators at the cable TV networks grabbed the fearball and ran with it, with considerable help from Sultan Bush's bureaucrats.
Mission accomplished: Total vulnerability. Civil Defense was replaced by Cognitive Dissonance. We realized the government was absolutely useless (or worse) and we simultaneously had to obey the government's "protective measures" like TSA.
China and Russia never abandoned Civil Defense. They continued to serve their own people with vast and well-maintained bunkers. ¶ 5:45 PM
Supposedly the 'duck and cover' drills and the fallout shelters of 1960 were generators of panic.
Nope, it's the exact opposite, by intention and result. Eisenhower and JFK wanted Americans to feel confident. That's why they built public shelters and encouraged the building of private shelters.
Basic fact about anxiety: When you do something that gives you a convincing sense of control, you lose the panic.
I've noticed this lately re heavy snow. Before I figured out how to rake the roof, I just sat in the house and waited for it to collapse. It didn't break, but it did leak badly, and my heart went wild. After I got the tools and the technique and the guts to go out there and DO IT, no more ice dams and no more panic.
When you have your own tornado/fallout shelter, or you know there's a public tornado/fallout shelter nearby, you don't panic nearly as much about the mysterious tornado/fallout.
Later presidents, beginning with Unhanged Traitor Carter, intentionally substituted panic for confidence, and concentrated solely on protecting their own personal dictatorial ass. The fallout shelter system, and the Civil Defense warning system, were allowed to lapse and gradually deleted from the bureaucracy.
In 2001 when the dreaded event finally happened, no part of the government responded and no emergency warnings were broadcast. The Professional Panicators at the cable TV networks grabbed the fearball and ran with it, with considerable help from Sultan Bush's bureaucrats.
Mission accomplished: Total vulnerability. Civil Defense was replaced by Cognitive Dissonance. We realized the government was absolutely useless (or worse) and we simultaneously had to obey the government's "protective measures" like TSA.
China and Russia never abandoned Civil Defense. They continued to serve their own people with vast and well-maintained bunkers. ¶ 5:45 PM
Why no invasion of Canada?
Canada's Parliament has abruptly removed the Harper government and called a new election in May. The removal wasn't by the usual Vote of No Confidence, but by an unprecedented motion declaring that Harper is in contempt of Parliament.
For some unknown reason our Islamic/Gaian Occupation Government hasn't decided to invade this strange place, this major source of oil and natural gas, where Rebel Forces threaten the Status Quo. Maybe it's because nobody has even noticed! The "American" media have scarcely mentioned it, except in the context of stocks and currency exchanges.
The lack of notice isn't surprising. "Our" government and media pay close attention to events near their Crown Prince's residence in Riyadh, but they don't notice events that happen way across the world in the mysterious Western Hemisphere. ¶ 7:18 AM
For some unknown reason our Islamic/Gaian Occupation Government hasn't decided to invade this strange place, this major source of oil and natural gas, where Rebel Forces threaten the Status Quo. Maybe it's because nobody has even noticed! The "American" media have scarcely mentioned it, except in the context of stocks and currency exchanges.
The lack of notice isn't surprising. "Our" government and media pay close attention to events near their Crown Prince's residence in Riyadh, but they don't notice events that happen way across the world in the mysterious Western Hemisphere. ¶ 7:18 AM
It's Earth Hour!
Polistra and Happystar continue their annual salute to Earth Hour, this time with a special emphasis on Edison's light bulb.
You can take our bulbs when you pry them from our hot, bright hands.
Here's Polistra's hero FDR on rural electrification:
What would FDR think of us now?
All that planning, all those dams and power plants and poles and wires built directly by the Feds and indirectly under Federal urging; all those farms and cities where civilized light replaced primitive darkness. All flushed down the lo-flo toilet. And flushed. And flushed. And flushed.
Our "modern" leaders have spent the last 22 years proving those old complainers right: proving that democracy can't or won't provide the needs of modern civilization. Some of these "modern" leaders claim to be FDR's heirs, which makes their intentional sabotage of the light, their intentional return to crude primitivism even more shameful. ¶ 4:26 AM
You can take our bulbs when you pry them from our hot, bright hands.
Here's Polistra's hero FDR on rural electrification:
In those days, there was only one discordant note in that first stay of mine at Warm Springs: When the first of the month bill came in for electric light in my little cottage I found that the charge was eighteen cents a kilowatt hour -- about four times as much as I paid in another community, Hyde Park, New York. And that light bill started my long study of proper public utility charges for electric current, started in my mind the whole subject of getting electricity into farm homes throughout the United States.
And so, my friends, it can be said with a good deal of truth that a little cottage at Warm Springs, Georgia, was the birthplace of the Rural Electrification Administration. Six years ago, in 1932, there was much talk about more widespread and cheaper use of electricity, but it is only since March 4, 1933, that your Government has reduced that talk to practical results. Yes, electricity is a modern necessity of life, not a luxury. That necessity ought to be found in every village, in every home and on every farm in every part of the wide United States.
The dedication of this Rural Electrification Administration project in Georgia today is a symbol of the progress we are making -- and, my friends, we are not going to stop.
In many countries today democracy is under attack by those who charge that democracy fails to provide its people with the needs of modern civilization. I do not subscribe to that charge. You and I, the people of this State and the people of all the states, believe that democracy today is succeeding but that an absolute necessity for its future success is the fighting spirit of the American people -- their insistence that we go forward and not back.
What would FDR think of us now?
All that planning, all those dams and power plants and poles and wires built directly by the Feds and indirectly under Federal urging; all those farms and cities where civilized light replaced primitive darkness. All flushed down the lo-flo toilet. And flushed. And flushed. And flushed.
Our "modern" leaders have spent the last 22 years proving those old complainers right: proving that democracy can't or won't provide the needs of modern civilization. Some of these "modern" leaders claim to be FDR's heirs, which makes their intentional sabotage of the light, their intentional return to crude primitivism even more shameful. ¶ 4:26 AM
Friday, March 25, 2011
We already knew that
A rather cute bit of research is showing up in all the web science pages today. Guinea hens (upscale chickens) adopt a special 'striding' gait when walking on slippery surfaces. Humans should adopt the same gait.
This may be news to the researchers in South Carolina, but it's not news to Northerners who walk a lot. For that matter it's not news to Northern drivers either. Same overall trick in all cases. Keep the body mass moving as smoothly as you possibly can, and direct the feet straight downward as much as possible. Bend the knees and flatten the feet so that the feet never have to pull or push much, thus taking advantage of static friction.
More specifically, half of the SC advice is good: don't shuffle. Shuffling is all forward-backward push-pull, thus constantly staying in the range of dynamic friction. But the other half is badly phrased. In a stride (as commonly understood) the forward heel strikes the ground while the leg is pushing forward. Guaranteed to break whatever static friction is available, guaranteed to fall.
Frankly I'm surprised that chickens have bothered to develop a special gait for slippy. I don't pay a whole lot of attention to birds, but as far as I've noticed they just don't spend any time on ice. They can fly, after all. And when they do have to walk on slippery surfaces, they have claws. ¶ 10:43 AM
This may be news to the researchers in South Carolina, but it's not news to Northerners who walk a lot. For that matter it's not news to Northern drivers either. Same overall trick in all cases. Keep the body mass moving as smoothly as you possibly can, and direct the feet straight downward as much as possible. Bend the knees and flatten the feet so that the feet never have to pull or push much, thus taking advantage of static friction.
More specifically, half of the SC advice is good: don't shuffle. Shuffling is all forward-backward push-pull, thus constantly staying in the range of dynamic friction. But the other half is badly phrased. In a stride (as commonly understood) the forward heel strikes the ground while the leg is pushing forward. Guaranteed to break whatever static friction is available, guaranteed to fall.
Frankly I'm surprised that chickens have bothered to develop a special gait for slippy. I don't pay a whole lot of attention to birds, but as far as I've noticed they just don't spend any time on ice. They can fly, after all. And when they do have to walk on slippery surfaces, they have claws. ¶ 10:43 AM
Thursday, March 24, 2011
Gaaaarrrrkkkhhh!
A radio ad for some kind of pop-psychology program called FHU starts with these two sentences:
"The solution to your problems cannot be cured by reading a book. That's because the ability to solve those problems lie within you."
It's not really ungrammatical, it's ... unsemantical? Unsyntactical?
It's Martians trying to speak English but not quite getting it? ¶ 12:58 PM
"The solution to your problems cannot be cured by reading a book. That's because the ability to solve those problems lie within you."
It's not really ungrammatical, it's ... unsemantical? Unsyntactical?
It's Martians trying to speak English but not quite getting it? ¶ 12:58 PM
The ride
As the two "parties" gear up their "debates" and "arguments" toward the next "election", in which "voters" get to make marks on "ballots" which will be promptly discarded, and in which we will Hold The Other Team Accountable By Damn ...
As all this jibber-jabber builds toward its inevitable conclusion with the same monstrous mutant assholes still in charge, Polistra is troubled by a nagging sense that all this crap reminds her of something from the past.
In the old amusement park plane ride, you imagine you're in control. You yank the wheel from side to side, pull it back and push it forward, and the plane turns! and the plane goes up and down! Oh boy, I'm really in control! I'm really flying! You don't notice that the turning is rigidly radial, and the up-and-downing is controlled by a cam in the center. You don't notice that the unoccupied planes are going up and down in the same way. You're having too much fun in your dreams!
The Democracy Ride is the same. Except for the fun. ¶ 12:19 PM
As all this jibber-jabber builds toward its inevitable conclusion with the same monstrous mutant assholes still in charge, Polistra is troubled by a nagging sense that all this crap reminds her of something from the past.
In the old amusement park plane ride, you imagine you're in control. You yank the wheel from side to side, pull it back and push it forward, and the plane turns! and the plane goes up and down! Oh boy, I'm really in control! I'm really flying! You don't notice that the turning is rigidly radial, and the up-and-downing is controlled by a cam in the center. You don't notice that the unoccupied planes are going up and down in the same way. You're having too much fun in your dreams!
The Democracy Ride is the same. Except for the fun. ¶ 12:19 PM
Rubber, meet Road.
Here's the first chance for a gutsy governor to do something real. If it doesn't happen in this case, it just ain't gonna happen at all.
In Wisconsin it was clear from the first hour that Little Miss Scotti Walkperson wasn't going to do shit. When faced with Commie saboteurs, Little Miss Scotti instantly backed down, sat in her office and wrote sweet little personal notices to the absconded and self-abdicated former legislators. "Please come home, honey. All is forgiven. Love Scotti." A competent governor would have instantly sent out the state troopers to drag the illegitimate self-abdicated former legislators back to the capitol in shackles. A competent governor would have instantly dissolved the state school system and rebuilt it as a voucher system.
When you're facing Commies, you have to be hard, fast and lethal.
Gov Christie of NJ has already shown signs of those positive qualities. Here's his chance to get serious. Disobey the illegitimate judge's invalid and void decision, dare the illegitimate "judge" to send in the National Gayrd. ¶ 9:43 AM
A New Jersey court took a step further in effectively tying Republican Governor Chris Christie’s hands on budget and education reform. Superior Court Judge Peter Doyne ruled that Christie’s budget cuts to school aid left public schools unable to provide a “thorough and efficient” education to New Jersey children.
Now the case goes to the state Supreme Court where those seven judges will decide whether to act on it or not.
Doyne’s decision is based on a decades-old ruling in the case Abbott vs. Burke that says the New Jersey state government has to equalize funding for all public schools. The intent was to make sure low-income or poorly performing schools weren’t left out during the appropriating process...
Doyne says the rule dictates that Christie’s $820 million cut to public schools last year doesn’t pass constitutional muster since it “fell more heavily upon our high risk districts and the children educated within those districts.”
In Wisconsin it was clear from the first hour that Little Miss Scotti Walkperson wasn't going to do shit. When faced with Commie saboteurs, Little Miss Scotti instantly backed down, sat in her office and wrote sweet little personal notices to the absconded and self-abdicated former legislators. "Please come home, honey. All is forgiven. Love Scotti." A competent governor would have instantly sent out the state troopers to drag the illegitimate self-abdicated former legislators back to the capitol in shackles. A competent governor would have instantly dissolved the state school system and rebuilt it as a voucher system.
When you're facing Commies, you have to be hard, fast and lethal.
Gov Christie of NJ has already shown signs of those positive qualities. Here's his chance to get serious. Disobey the illegitimate judge's invalid and void decision, dare the illegitimate "judge" to send in the National Gayrd. ¶ 9:43 AM
Tagging along
Conrad Black at NRO points out that the Libya mess is really a French move, with America tagging along for the ride.
This is unique in the post-1989 history of American wars. Until this point, all the wars run by Резидент Bush The Father, Comrade Clinton, Sultan Bush The Son, and Pasha Obama were purely American initiatives. We created various forms of fictional façades, using UN or NATO or other "alliances", but nobody was fooled. America was the aggressor in each case.
This time we're joining in belatedly and grudgingly, with no stated purpose. Most likely our real purpose is to obstruct the French, who can be remarkably effective and harsh when they are defending French interests. (There was a time when America was effective and harsh, a time when America defended American interests. That time is long gone and won't return.)
Why obstruct? Easy. Our goal in this war is to keep it going as long as possible, maintain indeterminate disorder and chaos in a country that competes with Saudi oil. ¶ 5:14 AM
This is unique in the post-1989 history of American wars. Until this point, all the wars run by Резидент Bush The Father, Comrade Clinton, Sultan Bush The Son, and Pasha Obama were purely American initiatives. We created various forms of fictional façades, using UN or NATO or other "alliances", but nobody was fooled. America was the aggressor in each case.
This time we're joining in belatedly and grudgingly, with no stated purpose. Most likely our real purpose is to obstruct the French, who can be remarkably effective and harsh when they are defending French interests. (There was a time when America was effective and harsh, a time when America defended American interests. That time is long gone and won't return.)
Why obstruct? Easy. Our goal in this war is to keep it going as long as possible, maintain indeterminate disorder and chaos in a country that competes with Saudi oil. ¶ 5:14 AM
Spelling bees, basketball, congress.
All three of these games started out as honest competitions open to anyone with a few basic qualifications. All three have become strange dishonest charades, maintaining a pretense of rules and competition for the sake of public spectacle, while reaching fully predetermined results.
Spelling bees used to be open to any kid within a certain age range, and used to be fast-moving procedures with no dawdling. Either you knew the word or you didn't. Now they are effectively limited to autistic home-schooled Hindoos, and every word is accompanied by an endless series of helps and clues. The procedure is designed to make the helps and clues appear optional, and the MC must act surprised each time a kid asks for one of the endless series of helps and clues, even though every single kid always asks for every single one of the endless series of helps and clues.
Basketball used to be a game open to any strong and fast athlete, and the purpose (as far as I can tell) was to throw the ball through a basket which was well above everyone's heads. Now it's played by carefully cultivated freakish black giants, and the purpose (as far as I can tell) is to violently smash the ball down into the basket, which is now at waist level for these freaks. The charade of rules is maintained, but the result is preset by each team's preselected and genetically determined average height.
Congress used to be open to any citizen above a certain age, and its purpose was to create, delete and revise laws. Now it's open to any Mafia-connected rich asshole above a certain net worth, and the purpose is to rubber-stamp each new step in our pre-determined national suicide. These steps are created by enemy agents wearing black robes and by enemy agents in the bureaucracy. Congress continues the visible charade of having rules and "debates", but the only thing they ever "debate" and "pass" in public is a resolution to honor a basketball team or a spelling-bee winner. ¶ 4:10 AM
Spelling bees used to be open to any kid within a certain age range, and used to be fast-moving procedures with no dawdling. Either you knew the word or you didn't. Now they are effectively limited to autistic home-schooled Hindoos, and every word is accompanied by an endless series of helps and clues. The procedure is designed to make the helps and clues appear optional, and the MC must act surprised each time a kid asks for one of the endless series of helps and clues, even though every single kid always asks for every single one of the endless series of helps and clues.
Basketball used to be a game open to any strong and fast athlete, and the purpose (as far as I can tell) was to throw the ball through a basket which was well above everyone's heads. Now it's played by carefully cultivated freakish black giants, and the purpose (as far as I can tell) is to violently smash the ball down into the basket, which is now at waist level for these freaks. The charade of rules is maintained, but the result is preset by each team's preselected and genetically determined average height.
Congress used to be open to any citizen above a certain age, and its purpose was to create, delete and revise laws. Now it's open to any Mafia-connected rich asshole above a certain net worth, and the purpose is to rubber-stamp each new step in our pre-determined national suicide. These steps are created by enemy agents wearing black robes and by enemy agents in the bureaucracy. Congress continues the visible charade of having rules and "debates", but the only thing they ever "debate" and "pass" in public is a resolution to honor a basketball team or a spelling-bee winner. ¶ 4:10 AM
Monday, March 21, 2011
Asking the right questions for once
The MSM are asking hard questions about the Libya travesty. Have to give them major credit for learning from history and using logic, especially since Obama is their own golden boy.
Is the goal to remove Qaddafi? No. Is the goal to aid the rebels? No.
Ah, I've got it! Our goal is to impress Jody Foster!
Or maybe we're trying to impress that stripper named Odyssey Dawn. She'll date us now for sure!
= = = = =
Seriously, the desired result and the desired purpose of this war are dead easy to figure out. Follow the money.
Cui Bono? Saudi Bono.
This holds for all American foreign policy and "green" energy policy since 1989.
We exist to guarantee that Saudi oil will be the only oil available.
That's the Allah-given purpose of the good old USA. We eliminate our own production by laws and regulations, and we take other competing countries out of production by running endless wars in those countries.
So the desired end result here is the same as the result in Iraq: Long-term chaos in a country that competes with Saudi oil production.
No mystery. ¶ 1:03 PM
Is the goal to remove Qaddafi? No. Is the goal to aid the rebels? No.
Ah, I've got it! Our goal is to impress Jody Foster!
Or maybe we're trying to impress that stripper named Odyssey Dawn. She'll date us now for sure!
= = = = =
Seriously, the desired result and the desired purpose of this war are dead easy to figure out. Follow the money.
Cui Bono? Saudi Bono.
This holds for all American foreign policy and "green" energy policy since 1989.
We exist to guarantee that Saudi oil will be the only oil available.
That's the Allah-given purpose of the good old USA. We eliminate our own production by laws and regulations, and we take other competing countries out of production by running endless wars in those countries.
So the desired end result here is the same as the result in Iraq: Long-term chaos in a country that competes with Saudi oil production.
No mystery. ¶ 1:03 PM
Do they deserve it?
Mark Davis, subbing Rush this morning, is doing a long philosophical discussion on Libya. At the start he said something about supporting the role of the US military as a force for good, and Of Course supporting the US military.
Hold on now. Maybe it's time for a rethink.
For the last 20 years the US military has gone along with everything bad.
They've enthusiastically adopted feminism, homosexualism, Islam, and environmentalism. The Marines have balked just a bit on some of these, but haven't mutinied, so the verbal reluctance is totally irrelevant. The Army is leading the way on Global Warming and Islam, even getting ahead of the civilian bureaucracy.
Now the military is happily assisting al-Qaeda forces against Qaddafi in Libya.
Why in the motherfucking hell should I support an organization that cheerfully serves the enemies of the American people in every possible way? ¶ 10:10 AM
Hold on now. Maybe it's time for a rethink.
For the last 20 years the US military has gone along with everything bad.
They've enthusiastically adopted feminism, homosexualism, Islam, and environmentalism. The Marines have balked just a bit on some of these, but haven't mutinied, so the verbal reluctance is totally irrelevant. The Army is leading the way on Global Warming and Islam, even getting ahead of the civilian bureaucracy.
Now the military is happily assisting al-Qaeda forces against Qaddafi in Libya.
Why in the motherfucking hell should I support an organization that cheerfully serves the enemies of the American people in every possible way? ¶ 10:10 AM
Oh. Just got it.
Been puzzled by the difference in media coverage and elite interest in ocean floods vs river floods.
Ocean floods (tsunamis, hurricanes) get lots of panic and lots of media coverage, while river floods go unnoticed. Good example is last year's Nashville flood, which simply didn't happen in the national news.
I just now got it.
Flood plains near oceans are called "beaches" or "resorts" and are occupied by People Who Count.
Flood plains near rivers are called "farms" or "trailer parks" and are occupied by Unpersons. ¶ 7:17 AM
Ocean floods (tsunamis, hurricanes) get lots of panic and lots of media coverage, while river floods go unnoticed. Good example is last year's Nashville flood, which simply didn't happen in the national news.
I just now got it.
Flood plains near oceans are called "beaches" or "resorts" and are occupied by People Who Count.
Flood plains near rivers are called "farms" or "trailer parks" and are occupied by Unpersons. ¶ 7:17 AM
Sunday, March 20, 2011
Loughnerian logic again
Polistra observed earlier that Jared Loughner's allegedly weird syllogisms are much less weird than the "logic" followed by our ruling class.
Nice neat example tonight.
NBC News anchor talking about Libya with Embedded General McCaffrey.
Anchor asks a good question: "Is this a war?"
EG McCaffrey answers, apparently dead serious: "Nope, couldn't be. If it was a war, the War Powers Act of 1973 would have been invoked."
Not quite a syllogism, but certainly a shibboleth. If this makes sense to you, then you are undoubtedly a member of the DC ruling class. If this is totally incomprehensible to you, then you are human.
= = = = =
A more down-home version of the exchange would be like this:
Cop: "License and registration, sir. I clocked you at 95 in a 35 zone."
Driver: "Nope, couldn't be. If I was going 95, I would have been speeding. I wasn't speeding, so I couldn't have been going 95."
Nice neat example tonight.
NBC News anchor talking about Libya with Embedded General McCaffrey.
Anchor asks a good question: "Is this a war?"
EG McCaffrey answers, apparently dead serious: "Nope, couldn't be. If it was a war, the War Powers Act of 1973 would have been invoked."
Not quite a syllogism, but certainly a shibboleth. If this makes sense to you, then you are undoubtedly a member of the DC ruling class. If this is totally incomprehensible to you, then you are human.
= = = = =
A more down-home version of the exchange would be like this:
Cop: "License and registration, sir. I clocked you at 95 in a 35 zone."
Driver: "Nope, couldn't be. If I was going 95, I would have been speeding. I wasn't speeding, so I couldn't have been going 95."
Labels: Loughnerian Logic
¶ 5:43 PM
When?
When was the last time you heard any public figure [politician, entertainer, executive] say "I was wrong" when he was wrong?
We do occasionally get the Grand Apology Tour from people who have accidentally told the truth, or from white people who have said the word nigger.
But we never hear "I was wrong" from people who were actually wrong.
Nor do we hear "Yes, I think you're probably right" or even "Hmm. I'll have to think about that."
Facts are no longer capable of changing minds. Only the threat of riots from Jesse Jackson, or the threat of bankruptcy from the Jewish Mafia, can make a public figure sound apologetic. ¶ 11:37 AM
We do occasionally get the Grand Apology Tour from people who have accidentally told the truth, or from white people who have said the word nigger.
But we never hear "I was wrong" from people who were actually wrong.
Nor do we hear "Yes, I think you're probably right" or even "Hmm. I'll have to think about that."
Facts are no longer capable of changing minds. Only the threat of riots from Jesse Jackson, or the threat of bankruptcy from the Jewish Mafia, can make a public figure sound apologetic. ¶ 11:37 AM
Saturday, March 19, 2011
Language update, at last
After a long dry spell, partly filled in by unearthing some rare old specimens, Professor Polistra has finally gathered enough new annoyances for a short blackboard.
Mano y mano:
instead of mano a mano. No reason for this except illiteracy.
Potassium iodine:
instead of iodide. Even the supposed experts are saying it this way. Professor P is slightly puzzled by this. Iodine is no longer** a common household item, so it shouldn't be an attractor for pronunciation. The chemical pattern of 'something something-ide' is quite common, so it should be the attractor.
Omitting is:
This is a standard syntactic practice in most Slavic languages. It has always been an occasional rhetorical device in English, now seems to be spreading like wildfire with the same rhythm and feel as the Russian tendency.
"I'm just saying that your Ford dealer's diagnostic technology - top notch!"
... Mike Rowe in a Ford ad
"Surprisingly, Lewiston and Pullman - doing all right."
... KREM weather report about snow totals.
Weapons of Mass Destruction: [rerun with Libya]
Obviously not new, but Prof P hasn't written about it before.
This phrase is clumsy and intentionally deceptive.
Supposedly it refers to nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons. Well, nuclear fits the definition. A thermonuclear bomb destroys lots of buildings and kills lots of people. But chem and bio do not fit the label at all. The original purpose and point of chemical weapons was to kill an invading army without destroying your own industries and farms. Same with bio. Designed to kill and terrorize people, leave property alone. No destruction at all by definition. On the other side, WMD doesn't say anything unique about nuke, chem, bio. You can get plenty of destruction and death with 'conventional' explosives, and the biggest mass destruction in WW2 was caused by plain old fire. So WMD describes only one of the categories it supposedly contains, and also describes several weapons that are not within its supposed categories. In short, it's utterly useless as a description.
Its sole intent is to spread our irrational horror of everything nuclear onto an indefinite range of other weapons possessed by somebody we want to invade.
In short, the phrase is a terror weapon applied to our own population by our own government.
Productive:
In commerce, 'productivity' means replacing American workers by foreign slaves. In politics, 'productive' means treasonous. Example: NPR feature on Muslims in Long Island. A local mosque is disturbed because Rep Peter King, who had been a friend of theirs before 9/11, has learned something from 9/11. The feature concludes by saying "It is hoped that the next set of hearings will be more productive." In other words, the next set of hearings must bring us closer to surrender, must silence Americans once and for all.
Broadermiddleeast: [rerun with Libya]
This was one of Sultan Bush's favorite words, and now it's back. Sultan Bush used this mashed-together word to conflate and mash together all sorts of stuff that was happening in that part of the world, to justify attacking countries that hadn't attacked us. The Broadermiddleeast has returned, especially in Hillary's speeches, with the same purpose. Jumble together everything that's happening from Tunisia to Libya to Egypt to Bahrain, in order to justify attacking a country that hasn't attacked us.
= = = = =
** Footnote on iodine: I looked around to see if it was banned by FDA or EPA. Found that it's actually still available, but in the process I learned something useful. Iodine has become rare because doctors realized that harsh antibacterial agents like iodine, mercurochrome, and hydrogen peroxide are really worse for common cuts and scratches than simple soap and water! These hard chemicals do kill bacteria, but they also kill skin cells and impede healing. I've always used hydrogen peroxide for those purposes; guess I should stop. Or else start calling it hydrogen peroxine to be more modern.
After a long dry spell, partly filled in by unearthing some rare old specimens, Professor Polistra has finally gathered enough new annoyances for a short blackboard.
Mano y mano:
instead of mano a mano. No reason for this except illiteracy.
Potassium iodine:
instead of iodide. Even the supposed experts are saying it this way. Professor P is slightly puzzled by this. Iodine is no longer** a common household item, so it shouldn't be an attractor for pronunciation. The chemical pattern of 'something something-ide' is quite common, so it should be the attractor.
Omitting is:
This is a standard syntactic practice in most Slavic languages. It has always been an occasional rhetorical device in English, now seems to be spreading like wildfire with the same rhythm and feel as the Russian tendency.
"I'm just saying that your Ford dealer's diagnostic technology - top notch!"
... Mike Rowe in a Ford ad
"Surprisingly, Lewiston and Pullman - doing all right."
... KREM weather report about snow totals.
Weapons of Mass Destruction: [rerun with Libya]
Obviously not new, but Prof P hasn't written about it before.
This phrase is clumsy and intentionally deceptive.
Supposedly it refers to nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons. Well, nuclear fits the definition. A thermonuclear bomb destroys lots of buildings and kills lots of people. But chem and bio do not fit the label at all. The original purpose and point of chemical weapons was to kill an invading army without destroying your own industries and farms. Same with bio. Designed to kill and terrorize people, leave property alone. No destruction at all by definition. On the other side, WMD doesn't say anything unique about nuke, chem, bio. You can get plenty of destruction and death with 'conventional' explosives, and the biggest mass destruction in WW2 was caused by plain old fire. So WMD describes only one of the categories it supposedly contains, and also describes several weapons that are not within its supposed categories. In short, it's utterly useless as a description.
Its sole intent is to spread our irrational horror of everything nuclear onto an indefinite range of other weapons possessed by somebody we want to invade.
In short, the phrase is a terror weapon applied to our own population by our own government.
Productive:
In commerce, 'productivity' means replacing American workers by foreign slaves. In politics, 'productive' means treasonous. Example: NPR feature on Muslims in Long Island. A local mosque is disturbed because Rep Peter King, who had been a friend of theirs before 9/11, has learned something from 9/11. The feature concludes by saying "It is hoped that the next set of hearings will be more productive." In other words, the next set of hearings must bring us closer to surrender, must silence Americans once and for all.
Broadermiddleeast: [rerun with Libya]
This was one of Sultan Bush's favorite words, and now it's back. Sultan Bush used this mashed-together word to conflate and mash together all sorts of stuff that was happening in that part of the world, to justify attacking countries that hadn't attacked us. The Broadermiddleeast has returned, especially in Hillary's speeches, with the same purpose. Jumble together everything that's happening from Tunisia to Libya to Egypt to Bahrain, in order to justify attacking a country that hasn't attacked us.
= = = = =
** Footnote on iodine: I looked around to see if it was banned by FDA or EPA. Found that it's actually still available, but in the process I learned something useful. Iodine has become rare because doctors realized that harsh antibacterial agents like iodine, mercurochrome, and hydrogen peroxide are really worse for common cuts and scratches than simple soap and water! These hard chemicals do kill bacteria, but they also kill skin cells and impede healing. I've always used hydrogen peroxide for those purposes; guess I should stop. Or else start calling it hydrogen peroxine to be more modern.
Labels: Language update
¶ 6:27 AM
Aaaaand here we go again!
Polistra noted a couple months ago that the wave of revolts in the Arab world is objectively the end-game of Sheikh Osama's 20-year war. Osama has never intended to impose sharia on the West. He views himself as a knight or champion of the Arab people, using Islam as fuel to help the Arabs take back their world from Western domination. And now it's happening. Oddly we haven't heard from him; you'd think a word of encouragement would be appropriate.
America and Europe didn't take a side in Egypt and Tunisia. In Tunisia the rebels succeeded, and in Egypt the army took over for a while, pending the appointment of the next Mubarak type. One win and one loss for Osama, without any intervention; a reasonable result, and at least we didn't waste any money and men.
Now, for some unknown reason, the West has decided to aid the al-Qaeda rebels in Libya. As always we operate "under UN resolutions". As always we promise first to do just a little advising and assistance. As always we will bog down in a quagmire, with no goal in mind, with no definite sense of who's the enemy and why, with Gandhian Rules of Non-engagement requiring our soldiers to die without firing a shot, and with our traitorous milifairy bureaucracy rigorously prosecuting any non-fag soldier who dares to shoot the enemy. As always we will accomplish nothing except losing money and lives and irritating the pig.
Maybe that's why Sheikh Osama hasn't bothered to speak. He knows that we're going to continue our bizarre national suicide without any work on his part. Wily old coot. ¶ 4:14 AM
America and Europe didn't take a side in Egypt and Tunisia. In Tunisia the rebels succeeded, and in Egypt the army took over for a while, pending the appointment of the next Mubarak type. One win and one loss for Osama, without any intervention; a reasonable result, and at least we didn't waste any money and men.
Now, for some unknown reason, the West has decided to aid the al-Qaeda rebels in Libya. As always we operate "under UN resolutions". As always we promise first to do just a little advising and assistance. As always we will bog down in a quagmire, with no goal in mind, with no definite sense of who's the enemy and why, with Gandhian Rules of Non-engagement requiring our soldiers to die without firing a shot, and with our traitorous milifairy bureaucracy rigorously prosecuting any non-fag soldier who dares to shoot the enemy. As always we will accomplish nothing except losing money and lives and irritating the pig.
Maybe that's why Sheikh Osama hasn't bothered to speak. He knows that we're going to continue our bizarre national suicide without any work on his part. Wily old coot. ¶ 4:14 AM
Thursday, March 17, 2011
Bravo Obama again!
He states clearly that the "plume" will not endanger Americans, and also states clearly that America will not abandon nuclear power! After a long period of apparent confusion, he's showing genuine leadership.
Remains to be seen whether the Satanist-Leninist Poison Vendors (CNN, Fox, ABC, etc) will be slowed down by this. Their language in reporting Obama's little speech is almost mocking. They appear to be locked in a wild crack-fueled manic death spiral, unstoppable even by their usual Lord and Idol. ¶ 2:00 PM
Remains to be seen whether the Satanist-Leninist Poison Vendors (CNN, Fox, ABC, etc) will be slowed down by this. Their language in reporting Obama's little speech is almost mocking. They appear to be locked in a wild crack-fueled manic death spiral, unstoppable even by their usual Lord and Idol. ¶ 2:00 PM
Gaea vs Gaia part 2
Polistra has previously discussed the difference between James Lovelock's original concept of Gaea and the later Planet Goddess Gaia. Lovelock's Gaea was simply a metaphor of the Earth as a living creature, with an uncountable number of negative feedback loops keeping everything in long-term equilibrium while allowing lots of short-term random movement. Gaia is a vengeful and arbitrary Goddess, permanently on the rag.
One of Rush's callers this week raised an interesting point: For the tyrants who obey Gaia, how should the Jap earthquake be interpreted? Japan has been at the forefront of environmentalism, so why did Gaia punish it? And now we can add the plume of radiation, which is only meaningful to Gaia-fearing fuckheads. It's heading straight for Hollywood! Deeeelicious.
Older polytheistic cultures would be able to write this story instantly.
Gaea, the blooming mother-goddess of natural life and natural adaptation, has finally grown tired of the arbitrary and nasty usurper Gaia. Old Gaea has applied a strong negative signal, an error correction force, to the two centerpoints of the tyrannical usurper!
In less technical words, a bitchslap right across the tits. ¶ 3:59 AM
One of Rush's callers this week raised an interesting point: For the tyrants who obey Gaia, how should the Jap earthquake be interpreted? Japan has been at the forefront of environmentalism, so why did Gaia punish it? And now we can add the plume of radiation, which is only meaningful to Gaia-fearing fuckheads. It's heading straight for Hollywood! Deeeelicious.
Older polytheistic cultures would be able to write this story instantly.
Gaea, the blooming mother-goddess of natural life and natural adaptation, has finally grown tired of the arbitrary and nasty usurper Gaia. Old Gaea has applied a strong negative signal, an error correction force, to the two centerpoints of the tyrannical usurper!
In less technical words, a bitchslap right across the tits. ¶ 3:59 AM
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
Spring!
This has been a long and tiring but not especially awful winter. Heavy snow at the start and finish (Nov and Feb) with lots of smaller snows, rain and wind in between. Now that I know how to deal with the snow (rake the roof early and often) it's not a big problem, but the relentless rain/wind cycle wears me out.
Today the Sun finally returns.
Mmmmmm. ¶ 8:38 PM
Today the Sun finally returns.
Mmmmmm. ¶ 8:38 PM
Why I listen to NPR, part 7.
Even though NPR has partly succumbed to the nuke panic, they also manage to pick up some actual FACTS. This morning they ran a long interview, with no interruptions or sighing or chortling or mocking, with Robert Baker, a Texas Tech prof who has been doing detailed studies of life around Chernobyl for 20 years.
Full transcription isn't online, so here's my partial crude transcription:
Q: What led you to study Chernobyl?
A: I'd seen the cover of Time magazine calling it a Nuclear Desert. When I went over there the first time it was shocking, because it didn't look like a nuclear desert in my mind...
Q: As I understand it, you have not found any long-term genetic problems.
A: In wolves and mice and birds and other animals, we have not been able to document a genetic modification. It may be there, but it's too small to detect. ... We don't know that the radiation has produced inferior bank voles.
Q: Bank voles are teensy-weensy little rodents...
A: ... In fact those voles are radioactive. You can catch one and use the Geiger counter and I mean it screams. But they seem to do their life cycle without great consequences. If you didn't have a Geiger counter you wouldn't be able to tell the difference.
Q: What about large mammals?
Wolves are doing well, moose, red deer. We wrote a paper in which we said the world's largest nuclear disaster has created a wildlife preserve.
Q: What about Japan? Reactors sitting near the ocean in farmland...
A: I'm sure it will recover in time. In ten years time there will be mice and other animals living normally there. But for growing food, it will probably be unusable for centuries.
Q: Should we rethink our relationship to radiation? Should we be as afraid of it as we clearly are? [Special bravo for asking this question!]
A: World Health Organization did a study on women who were exposed around Chernobyl. Many of them chose to have an abortion, but among those who didn't abort, the babies do not show an elevated birth defect rate. Yes, we do need to rethink the fear factor.
= = = = =
Later: Compare with the legacy of Bhopal. A chemical incident, no radioactivity at all, has produced three generations of genetic damage. Obviously we need to avoid all such incidents, radioactive or not. But we have been manipulated into applying a unique and disproportionate paranoia to radioactivity. (Perhaps I'm so hot on this question because I took part in this Soviet-funded manipulation back in the '70s, thus I know how and why it happened.) ¶ 7:18 AM
Full transcription isn't online, so here's my partial crude transcription:
Q: What led you to study Chernobyl?
A: I'd seen the cover of Time magazine calling it a Nuclear Desert. When I went over there the first time it was shocking, because it didn't look like a nuclear desert in my mind...
Q: As I understand it, you have not found any long-term genetic problems.
A: In wolves and mice and birds and other animals, we have not been able to document a genetic modification. It may be there, but it's too small to detect. ... We don't know that the radiation has produced inferior bank voles.
Q: Bank voles are teensy-weensy little rodents...
A: ... In fact those voles are radioactive. You can catch one and use the Geiger counter and I mean it screams. But they seem to do their life cycle without great consequences. If you didn't have a Geiger counter you wouldn't be able to tell the difference.
Q: What about large mammals?
Wolves are doing well, moose, red deer. We wrote a paper in which we said the world's largest nuclear disaster has created a wildlife preserve.
Q: What about Japan? Reactors sitting near the ocean in farmland...
A: I'm sure it will recover in time. In ten years time there will be mice and other animals living normally there. But for growing food, it will probably be unusable for centuries.
Q: Should we rethink our relationship to radiation? Should we be as afraid of it as we clearly are? [Special bravo for asking this question!]
A: World Health Organization did a study on women who were exposed around Chernobyl. Many of them chose to have an abortion, but among those who didn't abort, the babies do not show an elevated birth defect rate. Yes, we do need to rethink the fear factor.
= = = = =
Later: Compare with the legacy of Bhopal. A chemical incident, no radioactivity at all, has produced three generations of genetic damage. Obviously we need to avoid all such incidents, radioactive or not. But we have been manipulated into applying a unique and disproportionate paranoia to radioactivity. (Perhaps I'm so hot on this question because I took part in this Soviet-funded manipulation back in the '70s, thus I know how and why it happened.) ¶ 7:18 AM
Interesting point
Chris Arnold at NPR points out that Cap-n-Trade was part of the driving force behind the recent regrowth of nuke-plant construction. Because even the green wackos finally started to understand that nukes were non-polluting, they were reluctantly allowing nukes to count as "carbon credits" for power companies.
Now that Cap-n-Trade has been turned down by Congress several years in a row, the cost advantage of nuclear disappears, because the real cost of a nuke plant, even aside from all regulatory crap, is well above the cost of coal or natural gas. If Atmungsführerin Lisa Jackson (Heil! Heil! Heil!) manages to bring back full-fledged Cap-n-Trade through pure raw brute force, this could change again.
The real cost structure could also change when thorium-based power technology matures, but that hasn't happened yet. It won't happen here anyway, because no meaningful research happens here. That goes for everything, not just power tech. Thorium is happening in China. From now on everything new will happen in China. America (wholly-owned subsidiary of Goldman Sachs) will only invent new financial crimes. We will continue to lead the world in innovative ways to transfer money from productive people into the Swiss bank accounts of fat Jews. We will continue to fail in everything else. ¶ 6:21 AM
Now that Cap-n-Trade has been turned down by Congress several years in a row, the cost advantage of nuclear disappears, because the real cost of a nuke plant, even aside from all regulatory crap, is well above the cost of coal or natural gas. If Atmungsführerin Lisa Jackson (Heil! Heil! Heil!) manages to bring back full-fledged Cap-n-Trade through pure raw brute force, this could change again.
The real cost structure could also change when thorium-based power technology matures, but that hasn't happened yet. It won't happen here anyway, because no meaningful research happens here. That goes for everything, not just power tech. Thorium is happening in China. From now on everything new will happen in China. America (wholly-owned subsidiary of Goldman Sachs) will only invent new financial crimes. We will continue to lead the world in innovative ways to transfer money from productive people into the Swiss bank accounts of fat Jews. We will continue to fail in everything else. ¶ 6:21 AM
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
Bravo Obama!
Unlikely title for me, but can't help it.
Amid all this chickenshit panic about nuclear nonsense, Obama has been a firm voice of sanity.
Oddly, though, the media aren't responding. Normally our Satanist-Leninist Poison Vendors will instantly and unquestioningly obey a president who wears the D label, and especially a well-credentialed black leftist.
Not this time. They're proceeding at full speed to spin fantasies and theories and paranoia and lies, lies, lies, lies, lies. And that includes NPR, usually a bit more objective, and it includes many of the "conservative" media as well. They're all 100% focused on the potential danger to dozens, while 100% ignoring the million who are actually dying from starvation. ¶ 5:06 PM
Amid all this chickenshit panic about nuclear nonsense, Obama has been a firm voice of sanity.
Oddly, though, the media aren't responding. Normally our Satanist-Leninist Poison Vendors will instantly and unquestioningly obey a president who wears the D label, and especially a well-credentialed black leftist.
Not this time. They're proceeding at full speed to spin fantasies and theories and paranoia and lies, lies, lies, lies, lies. And that includes NPR, usually a bit more objective, and it includes many of the "conservative" media as well. They're all 100% focused on the potential danger to dozens, while 100% ignoring the million who are actually dying from starvation. ¶ 5:06 PM
OPT
Sort of following up on this entry about frugality and retirement.
Over the last few years I've shifted rather quickly toward Old People's Time. For some reason this artifact of aging surprised me; it's well known but I hadn't observed it in parents or grandparents.
My default sleeping pattern (Young Peoples Time or YPT) was fairly constant from age 8 to 58. Hit bed between 1 and 2 AM, wake up around 9 AM when not forced out of bed by horrible emergency situations such as work or school. This pattern was broken by a few years of night-shift work in the '70s, but returned to YPT default when I returned to day shift.
OPT started to creep in a few years ago, and now it's fully locked in. Bedtime is 8 PM invariant; wakeup is between 2:00 and 3:30 AM, with optimum at 2:45. That's a big change of habit in a few years! 2:45 was the tail end of bedtime range, now it's the middle of wakeup range.
To pin down the pattern I decided to extract times from the HTML archives of this blog, because I've always tended to post either at the exact start of the day or near the end. Often it's the need to write up a "new" idea that pulls me out of bed.
Here's the result after some Python processing and Excel spreadsheeting.
Horizontal axis is months, vertical axis is time in 24-hour format.
Bottom line (blue) is earliest post time for each month, which equals wakeup time; top (violet) is latest post time for each month, which is generally an hour before bed; middle (yellow) is mean of all dates in the month, which consistently favors the early side. On days when I write more than once, the second writing is usually in the morning.
The zero outliers on the bottom line are after midnight, which really should have been counted as latest instead of earliest .... but I couldn't think of a way to flip them without a lot of manual searching through HTML.
Overall the trend is clear, and of course it's a tanh or sigmoid, like most patterns in nature. Looks like OPT began to take effect in fall 2008, which makes some sense. Two serious strains happened in that season. First the Grand Theft Of America by Shotgun Paulson, which was a real mental shock. (I already knew the system was rigged, but Paulson forced the conclusion that the whole ruling setup is pure Mafia.) Then I got hit by a car, which was probably enabled by the cognitive shock.
= = = = =
Later and broader comment on OPT here. = = = = = Update April 2015. Added later years to the XLS and graph, making a 10-year record. Also reprocessed to make more sense of times between midnight to 2 AM. Before 2011 those times were at the end of my day; after 2011 they were at the beginning. (Had to treat 2AM as 2600 hours for the end-of-day instances, which is why Excel runs the graph up to 3000.) This gives a much stronger and clearer pattern to the whole thing:
Not hard to tell when I decided to switch bedtime!
¶ 9:41 AM
Over the last few years I've shifted rather quickly toward Old People's Time. For some reason this artifact of aging surprised me; it's well known but I hadn't observed it in parents or grandparents.
My default sleeping pattern (Young Peoples Time or YPT) was fairly constant from age 8 to 58. Hit bed between 1 and 2 AM, wake up around 9 AM when not forced out of bed by horrible emergency situations such as work or school. This pattern was broken by a few years of night-shift work in the '70s, but returned to YPT default when I returned to day shift.
OPT started to creep in a few years ago, and now it's fully locked in. Bedtime is 8 PM invariant; wakeup is between 2:00 and 3:30 AM, with optimum at 2:45. That's a big change of habit in a few years! 2:45 was the tail end of bedtime range, now it's the middle of wakeup range.
To pin down the pattern I decided to extract times from the HTML archives of this blog, because I've always tended to post either at the exact start of the day or near the end. Often it's the need to write up a "new" idea that pulls me out of bed.
Here's the result after some Python processing and Excel spreadsheeting.
Horizontal axis is months, vertical axis is time in 24-hour format.
Bottom line (blue) is earliest post time for each month, which equals wakeup time; top (violet) is latest post time for each month, which is generally an hour before bed; middle (yellow) is mean of all dates in the month, which consistently favors the early side. On days when I write more than once, the second writing is usually in the morning.
The zero outliers on the bottom line are after midnight, which really should have been counted as latest instead of earliest .... but I couldn't think of a way to flip them without a lot of manual searching through HTML.
Overall the trend is clear, and of course it's a tanh or sigmoid, like most patterns in nature. Looks like OPT began to take effect in fall 2008, which makes some sense. Two serious strains happened in that season. First the Grand Theft Of America by Shotgun Paulson, which was a real mental shock. (I already knew the system was rigged, but Paulson forced the conclusion that the whole ruling setup is pure Mafia.) Then I got hit by a car, which was probably enabled by the cognitive shock.
= = = = =
Later and broader comment on OPT here. = = = = = Update April 2015. Added later years to the XLS and graph, making a 10-year record. Also reprocessed to make more sense of times between midnight to 2 AM. Before 2011 those times were at the end of my day; after 2011 they were at the beginning. (Had to treat 2AM as 2600 hours for the end-of-day instances, which is why Excel runs the graph up to 3000.) This gives a much stronger and clearer pattern to the whole thing:
Not hard to tell when I decided to switch bedtime!
¶ 9:41 AM
Need any more proof?
Japan has at least 10,000 already dead, and a million in imminent danger of dying from starvation and exposure because the entire infrastructure has broken down.
Japan also has some nuclear reactors in trouble. If they blow like TMI, they will kill a massive ZERO people! Oh no! ZERO! That's 0,000,000,000,000 people!!! Holocaust! And if they go all the way to the worst case, to Chernobyl, they will kill DOZENS of people! Oh no! Holoholoholocaust!!!!!
And which are we worrying about? We're worrying about the potential ZERO or DOZEN deaths and ignoring the actual imminent MILLION deaths.
If we were Christians ... or even secularists with ordinary morals ... we'd be worrying most about the MILLION actual human souls in actual imminent danger.
Because we are Gaians we're worrying most about the potential ZERO or DOZEN deaths. Those deaths, if they occur, would be caused by The Righteous Revenge of Gaia Upon Human Sinful Misuse Of Sacramental Taboo Elements.
Well no, we're not really worried about those potential ZERO or DOZEN deaths. Actually we're rooting for those potential ZERO or DOZEN deaths, because we're rooting for Gaia. We want to see Gaia KILL AND KILL AND KILL, so our own Islamic/Gaian Occupation Government will be forced to reduce our unfortunate land to Haitian conditions.
We're waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay beyond insane. There's no word for it. ¶ 2:15 AM
Japan also has some nuclear reactors in trouble. If they blow like TMI, they will kill a massive ZERO people! Oh no! ZERO! That's 0,000,000,000,000 people!!! Holocaust! And if they go all the way to the worst case, to Chernobyl, they will kill DOZENS of people! Oh no! Holoholoholocaust!!!!!
And which are we worrying about? We're worrying about the potential ZERO or DOZEN deaths and ignoring the actual imminent MILLION deaths.
If we were Christians ... or even secularists with ordinary morals ... we'd be worrying most about the MILLION actual human souls in actual imminent danger.
Because we are Gaians we're worrying most about the potential ZERO or DOZEN deaths. Those deaths, if they occur, would be caused by The Righteous Revenge of Gaia Upon Human Sinful Misuse Of Sacramental Taboo Elements.
Well no, we're not really worried about those potential ZERO or DOZEN deaths. Actually we're rooting for those potential ZERO or DOZEN deaths, because we're rooting for Gaia. We want to see Gaia KILL AND KILL AND KILL, so our own Islamic/Gaian Occupation Government will be forced to reduce our unfortunate land to Haitian conditions.
We're waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay beyond insane. There's no word for it. ¶ 2:15 AM
Monday, March 14, 2011
Rohrschach
The Jap nuclear reactor problem forms a nice neat litmus test of sanity for other rich countries.
Sane France has made it clear that it will proceed with nuclear. France has already planned smaller less centralized reactors, some of which will be under the ocean. That's an ideal fail-safe design. If everything blows and breaks, the ocean will cool down and shield the reaction. Good old water is one of the best shields.
Sane China has made it clear that it will proceed with nuclear. New Chinese reactor designs don't rely on diesel-powered emergency cooling; they simply have a huge water tank above the reactor, so that gravity can send the water in. Another smart fail-safe device.
Insane America is going to "put on the brakes" (so says lunatic imbecile Lieberman) which is a bizarre phrase since we've had the brake lever fully jammed and rusted for 30 years. We were just recently starting to ask whether we might think about backing it off a notch or two. In the most decerebrate parts of this unfortunate land, the Gaian superstition about Taboo Materials has led some vaguely humanoid units to hoard potassium iodide pills. ¶ 5:40 PM
Sane France has made it clear that it will proceed with nuclear. France has already planned smaller less centralized reactors, some of which will be under the ocean. That's an ideal fail-safe design. If everything blows and breaks, the ocean will cool down and shield the reaction. Good old water is one of the best shields.
Sane China has made it clear that it will proceed with nuclear. New Chinese reactor designs don't rely on diesel-powered emergency cooling; they simply have a huge water tank above the reactor, so that gravity can send the water in. Another smart fail-safe device.
Insane America is going to "put on the brakes" (so says lunatic imbecile Lieberman) which is a bizarre phrase since we've had the brake lever fully jammed and rusted for 30 years. We were just recently starting to ask whether we might think about backing it off a notch or two. In the most decerebrate parts of this unfortunate land, the Gaian superstition about Taboo Materials has led some vaguely humanoid units to hoard potassium iodide pills. ¶ 5:40 PM
Asked and answered, asked and unanswered
Question: Why is there no looting in Japan?
Sailer asks it and finds the correct answer. Because Japan is a mono-ethnic culture. All Japs are Us, and all foreigners are Them. Japs are unapologetically "racist", with all kinds of awful names for everyone from Koreans (who are pretty much the same genetically) to Caucasians to Africans. No doubt at all about who's Us.
At the UK Telegraph, Ed West asks it and can't seem to find the answer.
Most of the commenters on West's column supplied the correct answer, but one asked a sidebar question that got me thinking about our idiotic assumptions.
"How does Japan run its economy without immigration?"
The assumption behind this question is that some jobs are so dirty or menial that Us won't do them, so we have to bring in some of Them to do those jobs.
Thinking in comparison to Japan, I realized the assumption is backwards. In fact we have set up those jobs as low-paying jobs because we've always had lots of Them coming in. Japan has never allowed any Them onto the island, let alone into jobs. All jobs have to be done by Us. We like Us and want Us to prosper. Therefore, all jobs must have decent pay.
And here we come back to Polistra's old hero, Henry Ford. Pay workers enough that they can buy the product they're making. The closed circle. Henry applied this rule to a mixed labor force, part long-settled whites, part recent Euro immigrants, part ex-plantation blacks. He sent intrusive social workers to insure that the families were functional, that the wives learned how to keep a household running. Henry turned a mix of Us and Them into all Us.
Our companies have forgotten Henry, but the Japs didn't forget. That's how they get along without immigrants, and that's how we could also get along without immigrants.
Sailer asks it and finds the correct answer. Because Japan is a mono-ethnic culture. All Japs are Us, and all foreigners are Them. Japs are unapologetically "racist", with all kinds of awful names for everyone from Koreans (who are pretty much the same genetically) to Caucasians to Africans. No doubt at all about who's Us.
At the UK Telegraph, Ed West asks it and can't seem to find the answer.
Most of the commenters on West's column supplied the correct answer, but one asked a sidebar question that got me thinking about our idiotic assumptions.
"How does Japan run its economy without immigration?"
The assumption behind this question is that some jobs are so dirty or menial that Us won't do them, so we have to bring in some of Them to do those jobs.
Thinking in comparison to Japan, I realized the assumption is backwards. In fact we have set up those jobs as low-paying jobs because we've always had lots of Them coming in. Japan has never allowed any Them onto the island, let alone into jobs. All jobs have to be done by Us. We like Us and want Us to prosper. Therefore, all jobs must have decent pay.
And here we come back to Polistra's old hero, Henry Ford. Pay workers enough that they can buy the product they're making. The closed circle. Henry applied this rule to a mixed labor force, part long-settled whites, part recent Euro immigrants, part ex-plantation blacks. He sent intrusive social workers to insure that the families were functional, that the wives learned how to keep a household running. Henry turned a mix of Us and Them into all Us.
Our companies have forgotten Henry, but the Japs didn't forget. That's how they get along without immigrants, and that's how we could also get along without immigrants.
Labels: Asked and answered
¶ 1:15 PM
Sunday, March 13, 2011
Spring?
This afternoon marks the first time since early November that all yards are snow-free and all sidewalks are usable. Larger snowmountains in plowed parking lots will likely last into May, because they include gravel that provides structural reinforcement. Snowcrete.
¶ 6:13 PM
Orman's absurd "conversion"
Financial advisor Suze Orman has written a book to "redefine" the American Dream. Welcome to the real world, Mr Orman. Except that you're nowhere near the real world yet.
In theory I should forgive Mr Orman for repenting, since he was one of the major platoon leaders of the last decade's Gramscian nightmare. But I'm not the forgiving type, and there's no evidence that Mr Orman has even understood the extent of his sins, let alone repented. He's just writing another book to make more money, power and glory.
Worst part: "I used to tell people to take Social Security at 62. Now I say don't you dare take SS at 62. Work till you're 68, till you're 70 if you can."
This tells me only one thing. It tells me that Mr Orman has NO EXPERIENCE of living within his means. He has NO IDEA what a frugal life feels like, or how it works.
He also has no idea how silly the advice sounds to an experienced cheapskate.
It's like a celibate priest trying to advise a young husband about marriage: "Listen, Jim. I know you've got this 'wife' thing in your house now, and I've read that you're supposed to perform some kind of actions with this 'wife' thing in order to produce more parishioners for my church. But please, Jim, remember this above all: don't lose contact with your choirboys! After you've performed whatever it is with the 'wife' thing, you'll still have, shall we say [wink wink] carnal urges, so you'll need to have a choirboy handy!"
After Jim sprints a record-breaking marathon to get away from the priest, he will derive only one bit of knowledge from the priest's advice, and it's not the same knowledge the priest wanted to impart.
= = = = =
Dammit, the point of frugality is to minimize work, not maximize work. This used to be common sense.
I was a slow learner, didn't really catch onto the cruel practical joke of the 'American Dream' until age 36. After living the American way for 20 years, I realized that the promised results were not forthcoming. No matter how politely I smiled, no matter how hard I worked, no matter how much "socially useful volunteering" I did, I wasn't getting anything. No love, no respect, no pleasure, and nowhere near enough money to buy those things.
I finally understood: Them as has gits. If you're born attractive and/or impressive, you'll git love and respect whether you work for them or not. If you're born unattractive and unimpressive, you won't git love and respect whether you work for them or not. The hoax called the 'American Dream' keeps the non-hasers working for the hasers, prevents the wholesale mutiny that would erupt if the non-hasers realized there was no git at the ever-receding end of the rainbow.
After this epiphany I set out on a different path. Satisfy myself, fuck the rules, live lean and break the habit of work as quickly as possible. I was able to cut loose from regular work at age 52, and now at 61 I could live for ten years on savings if necessary. I could actually wait till 68 to start SS, but I'm not going to do that. I'm going to start at 62, because America owes me. After 61 years on the bottom of the status stack, 61 years of receiving contempt and spit from the Beautiful People, 61 years of watching filthy rich assholes take all the love, respect and money, and finally 5 years of watching the Jewish Mafia steal interest from savers to feed their infinite appetite for financial crimes, America owes me.
= = = = =
Later: The above may sound like I'm profoundly unhappy. I'm not. Vengeful and bitter, yes. Unhappy, no. The whole point: I was unhappy when playing by the rules because the rules are rigged. After understanding the rig, I reached contentment by playing outside the rules. ¶ 7:07 AM
In theory I should forgive Mr Orman for repenting, since he was one of the major platoon leaders of the last decade's Gramscian nightmare. But I'm not the forgiving type, and there's no evidence that Mr Orman has even understood the extent of his sins, let alone repented. He's just writing another book to make more money, power and glory.
Worst part: "I used to tell people to take Social Security at 62. Now I say don't you dare take SS at 62. Work till you're 68, till you're 70 if you can."
This tells me only one thing. It tells me that Mr Orman has NO EXPERIENCE of living within his means. He has NO IDEA what a frugal life feels like, or how it works.
He also has no idea how silly the advice sounds to an experienced cheapskate.
It's like a celibate priest trying to advise a young husband about marriage: "Listen, Jim. I know you've got this 'wife' thing in your house now, and I've read that you're supposed to perform some kind of actions with this 'wife' thing in order to produce more parishioners for my church. But please, Jim, remember this above all: don't lose contact with your choirboys! After you've performed whatever it is with the 'wife' thing, you'll still have, shall we say [wink wink] carnal urges, so you'll need to have a choirboy handy!"
After Jim sprints a record-breaking marathon to get away from the priest, he will derive only one bit of knowledge from the priest's advice, and it's not the same knowledge the priest wanted to impart.
= = = = =
Dammit, the point of frugality is to minimize work, not maximize work. This used to be common sense.
I was a slow learner, didn't really catch onto the cruel practical joke of the 'American Dream' until age 36. After living the American way for 20 years, I realized that the promised results were not forthcoming. No matter how politely I smiled, no matter how hard I worked, no matter how much "socially useful volunteering" I did, I wasn't getting anything. No love, no respect, no pleasure, and nowhere near enough money to buy those things.
I finally understood: Them as has gits. If you're born attractive and/or impressive, you'll git love and respect whether you work for them or not. If you're born unattractive and unimpressive, you won't git love and respect whether you work for them or not. The hoax called the 'American Dream' keeps the non-hasers working for the hasers, prevents the wholesale mutiny that would erupt if the non-hasers realized there was no git at the ever-receding end of the rainbow.
After this epiphany I set out on a different path. Satisfy myself, fuck the rules, live lean and break the habit of work as quickly as possible. I was able to cut loose from regular work at age 52, and now at 61 I could live for ten years on savings if necessary. I could actually wait till 68 to start SS, but I'm not going to do that. I'm going to start at 62, because America owes me. After 61 years on the bottom of the status stack, 61 years of receiving contempt and spit from the Beautiful People, 61 years of watching filthy rich assholes take all the love, respect and money, and finally 5 years of watching the Jewish Mafia steal interest from savers to feed their infinite appetite for financial crimes, America owes me.
= = = = =
Later: The above may sound like I'm profoundly unhappy. I'm not. Vengeful and bitter, yes. Unhappy, no. The whole point: I was unhappy when playing by the rules because the rules are rigged. After understanding the rig, I reached contentment by playing outside the rules. ¶ 7:07 AM
Saturday, March 12, 2011
Prosaic dream
Sometimes on the way down to full sleep I'll pass through a superficial bit of dream-scrap, which begins with dull reality and zooms quickly into wild contradiction. The contradiction wakes me, presumably because the conscious logic-detectors aren't fully shut off yet.
This afternoon's dream-scrap was the least wild of all. It began with reading an article in Collectible Automobile magazine about the styling of the 1958 Impala. (In real life I had been reading the same article yesterday.) The article in the dream went along as expected, until the designer started discussing a problem he had with the B-pillar. Logic detector snapped to attention: Hey! The Impala was a hardtop by definition, so it couldn't have a B-pillar! Hey! This is all wrong! Wake up before it gets worse!
How's that for prosaic? Come on, dream mechanism, you can do better! ¶ 4:41 PM
This afternoon's dream-scrap was the least wild of all. It began with reading an article in Collectible Automobile magazine about the styling of the 1958 Impala. (In real life I had been reading the same article yesterday.) The article in the dream went along as expected, until the designer started discussing a problem he had with the B-pillar. Logic detector snapped to attention: Hey! The Impala was a hardtop by definition, so it couldn't have a B-pillar! Hey! This is all wrong! Wake up before it gets worse!
How's that for prosaic? Come on, dream mechanism, you can do better! ¶ 4:41 PM
Jesus, what a motherfucking hyper-idiot.
Michio Kuku is being interviewed on some talk program about his new book. He's "predicting" the future, with perfectly predictable results.
= = = = =
Koko Prediction 1:
As life becomes more and more computerized, pure democracy will become more common. Since no two democracies have ever made war with each other, this will bring peace.
Two obvious wrongs, but unfortunately they don't cancel out to make a right.
In fact we're already seeing that technology makes tyranny easier, not harder. (Which really shouldn't have been surprising; wise dystopians from Swift to Huxley to Walker Percy have been telling us this would happen!)
And in fact democracies quite often make war against each other. (I wonder if Babu realizes that his own stupidity is identical to George Bush's stupidity?)
These falsehoods don't cancel ... increasing tyranny doesn't lead to increasing peace either ... because war does not depend on the nominal form of government at all. War depends on aggressive impulses and perceived weakness.
= = = = =
Bobo Prediction 2:
In the future, national economies that depend on agriculture will be worthless because food is getting cheaper and cheaper, while nations that depend on software and entertainment will become more valuable because software and entertainment are precious.
Unlike Kaka's first prediction, this isn't totally false a priori. At this moment in history the trend happens to be running in the direction he claims. But he's entirely missing the basic economics of both commodities.
Food prices have an absolute floor. You can't conjure up a new copy of an apple by hitting Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V. Food requires real physical land with just the right characteristics, and real physical labor, and real physical energy, and long-term stability, and the right amount of rain and sun, and real human knowledge, and butchers and bakers and canneries. Through the last century we've eliminated part of the human labor which has lowered the price floor somewhat, but the other factors can't be eliminated.
And because food is big and perishable, stealing is hard to do and easy to catch. You can't steal a steak remotely from the other side of the world.
Software (and entertainment in digital form) can be copied infinitely many times with nearly zero labor. The price floor is zero. It can only be precious ... in fact it can only have a non-zero price at all ... when copyright laws are strictly and internationally enforced. As long as Chinese and Russian thieves are unreachable by prosecutors in the productive countries, any item of software can be acquired without paying for it. Consequence: Honest buyers are paying much more than they should, because such a large part of the potential demand is being satisfied illegally. In the end, only the most excruciatingly honest buyers will continue to pay. When you know that you can pay either $250 or $0 for an item that you need, only your innate morality will make you pay $250. If the item could be priced at $5 and still yield a profit, the buying public would include a vastly larger population with average morals, which would make it profitable to price the item at $5.
It's a vicious cycle. It could be broken by serious government action in software-producing countries, including 'digital acts of war' such as web blockades. But such actions will not happen because governments in the producing countries are owned by China. ¶ 12:10 PM
= = = = =
Koko Prediction 1:
As life becomes more and more computerized, pure democracy will become more common. Since no two democracies have ever made war with each other, this will bring peace.
Two obvious wrongs, but unfortunately they don't cancel out to make a right.
In fact we're already seeing that technology makes tyranny easier, not harder. (Which really shouldn't have been surprising; wise dystopians from Swift to Huxley to Walker Percy have been telling us this would happen!)
And in fact democracies quite often make war against each other. (I wonder if Babu realizes that his own stupidity is identical to George Bush's stupidity?)
These falsehoods don't cancel ... increasing tyranny doesn't lead to increasing peace either ... because war does not depend on the nominal form of government at all. War depends on aggressive impulses and perceived weakness.
= = = = =
Bobo Prediction 2:
In the future, national economies that depend on agriculture will be worthless because food is getting cheaper and cheaper, while nations that depend on software and entertainment will become more valuable because software and entertainment are precious.
Unlike Kaka's first prediction, this isn't totally false a priori. At this moment in history the trend happens to be running in the direction he claims. But he's entirely missing the basic economics of both commodities.
Food prices have an absolute floor. You can't conjure up a new copy of an apple by hitting Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V. Food requires real physical land with just the right characteristics, and real physical labor, and real physical energy, and long-term stability, and the right amount of rain and sun, and real human knowledge, and butchers and bakers and canneries. Through the last century we've eliminated part of the human labor which has lowered the price floor somewhat, but the other factors can't be eliminated.
And because food is big and perishable, stealing is hard to do and easy to catch. You can't steal a steak remotely from the other side of the world.
Software (and entertainment in digital form) can be copied infinitely many times with nearly zero labor. The price floor is zero. It can only be precious ... in fact it can only have a non-zero price at all ... when copyright laws are strictly and internationally enforced. As long as Chinese and Russian thieves are unreachable by prosecutors in the productive countries, any item of software can be acquired without paying for it. Consequence: Honest buyers are paying much more than they should, because such a large part of the potential demand is being satisfied illegally. In the end, only the most excruciatingly honest buyers will continue to pay. When you know that you can pay either $250 or $0 for an item that you need, only your innate morality will make you pay $250. If the item could be priced at $5 and still yield a profit, the buying public would include a vastly larger population with average morals, which would make it profitable to price the item at $5.
It's a vicious cycle. It could be broken by serious government action in software-producing countries, including 'digital acts of war' such as web blockades. But such actions will not happen because governments in the producing countries are owned by China. ¶ 12:10 PM
Bravo to BBC
BBC World Service is doing a splendid job on the Japan quake/tsunami. Fielding all sorts of panicky emails and twats and phone calls from people who think any nuclear plant anywhere is going to kill everyone everywhere.
A panel of real experts is trying to convey the real truth over and over and over: (1) We've already had the worst case in Three Mile Island, and it didn't injure or kill anyone. This plant may or may not have suffered the worst case, but even if it is the worst case, that's nothing to panic about. (2) It wasn't the quake that caused the problem, it was the tsunami flooding the emergency cooling generators. (3) If you want to worry about something, worry about the fact that Britain is unprepared for any sort of disaster, and should learn a few lessons from super-competent Japan.
Bravo. ¶ 5:28 AM
A panel of real experts is trying to convey the real truth over and over and over: (1) We've already had the worst case in Three Mile Island, and it didn't injure or kill anyone. This plant may or may not have suffered the worst case, but even if it is the worst case, that's nothing to panic about. (2) It wasn't the quake that caused the problem, it was the tsunami flooding the emergency cooling generators. (3) If you want to worry about something, worry about the fact that Britain is unprepared for any sort of disaster, and should learn a few lessons from super-competent Japan.
Bravo. ¶ 5:28 AM
Thursday, March 10, 2011
Dr Dog
In the news:
Dog Doctors seem to know a lot more than they "should".
Applying basic Darwinian thinking, it makes sense for an altruistic social animal to detect something wrong with her nest-mates, and to tell them about it.
But: Dogs don't have heart attacks, so the internal symptoms and smells couldn't be part of their instinctive repertoire of knowledge. Apparently they do have arrhythmias and gradual congestive heart failure, but not infarcts.
And since the dog can't know the recommended response to an infarct, how does Ceili know that Danny should stand still, shouldn't climb the stairs?
I'm starting to wonder if dogs have a connection with something beyond physical knowledge, a way to eliminate time and imagine alternative futures.
Less mystical explanation is that Danny's own brain knew the symptoms of a heart attack and knew he was heading for one, but his conscious mind was ignoring the warnings and attributing the pain to "indigestion". Ceili could read Danny's unconscious thoughts. This is still outside the Darwinian hypothesis, but there's plenty of evidence that dogs read our thoughts all the time, not just in emergencies.
= = = = =
Personal experience with canine telepathy, though not nearly as dramatic: In hippie days I had a strange dog named Piggles. She was part border collie, with all the stubborn intensity of that breed. She seemed to be disobedient and incorrigible. Much later I realized that Piggles was actually being perfectly loyal and obedient.
My verbal mind was full of hippie shit: peace, love, environmentalism, feminism, etc, etc. Piggles growled and bit some of the people that I "liked" for their ideological purity. This seemed like disloyalty. In fact she was trying to protect me from people I disliked intensely at the unconscious and visceral level. I was too full of shit to realize this at the time. ¶ 1:10 PM
PORTLAND, Ore. — A fiercely protective, elderly mutt is up for a national hero award for pestering her owner in the hours before he had a heart attack and then barking for help once it struck. Ceili, a 15-year-old Lab-mix, usually spends much of her day lounging in her home. But one steamy day last August, she clung to her owner, Danny Fincher, trotting behind him from room to room, sometimes blocking his path. When he sat down, she licked his arms and legs and then jumped on his easy chair, sniffing his breath. “She was driving me nuts,” he said. That evening, when he headed upstairs to bed, feeling knotted with indigestion, she nipped at his feet and pulled off a shoe, trying to prevent him from climbing the stairs. Moments later, Fincher suffered the heart attack. The dog ran into a back room where his wife was watching television. Barking furiously, Ceili darted between the two until Jewell checked on her husband and whisked him to Legacy Emanuel Medical Center. Thanks in part to Ceili, Fincher was treated within 20 minutes of his attack. “There’s no question she saved my life,” said Fincher, 62. For her actions, Ceili was nominated along with nine other dogs for a “Dogs of Valor” award sponsored by the nationwide Humane Society of the United States.
Dog Doctors seem to know a lot more than they "should".
Applying basic Darwinian thinking, it makes sense for an altruistic social animal to detect something wrong with her nest-mates, and to tell them about it.
But: Dogs don't have heart attacks, so the internal symptoms and smells couldn't be part of their instinctive repertoire of knowledge. Apparently they do have arrhythmias and gradual congestive heart failure, but not infarcts.
And since the dog can't know the recommended response to an infarct, how does Ceili know that Danny should stand still, shouldn't climb the stairs?
I'm starting to wonder if dogs have a connection with something beyond physical knowledge, a way to eliminate time and imagine alternative futures.
Less mystical explanation is that Danny's own brain knew the symptoms of a heart attack and knew he was heading for one, but his conscious mind was ignoring the warnings and attributing the pain to "indigestion". Ceili could read Danny's unconscious thoughts. This is still outside the Darwinian hypothesis, but there's plenty of evidence that dogs read our thoughts all the time, not just in emergencies.
= = = = =
Personal experience with canine telepathy, though not nearly as dramatic: In hippie days I had a strange dog named Piggles. She was part border collie, with all the stubborn intensity of that breed. She seemed to be disobedient and incorrigible. Much later I realized that Piggles was actually being perfectly loyal and obedient.
My verbal mind was full of hippie shit: peace, love, environmentalism, feminism, etc, etc. Piggles growled and bit some of the people that I "liked" for their ideological purity. This seemed like disloyalty. In fact she was trying to protect me from people I disliked intensely at the unconscious and visceral level. I was too full of shit to realize this at the time. ¶ 1:10 PM
Odd exception
The standard pattern in every corporate and governmental bureaucracy of this unfortunate land: Nobody gets fired for incompetence or criminality. You only get fired for telling the truth.
Until yesterday, the NPR mess stayed within the standard pattern. Juan Williams was fired for telling the truth about our Islamic enemies. Ron Schiller was fired for telling the truth about Jewish control of the media.
But now Vivian Schiller has been fired. Why? She hasn't done anything wrong by modern standards! Her public statements have been 100% false, and she was involved in firing the two truth-tellers, which is correct executive action.
Has she told the truth in a situation that isn't yet publicly known? Or does this indicate a slight return to sanity?
Evidence for the former: Commissar Susan Stamberg, who was the entire reason I stopped** listening to NPR in the '80s, has issued a strong указ against Comrade V. Schiller. Since Commissar S. Stamberg and Comrade V. Schiller are on the same team in all senses of the word, I have to assume Schiller is not being fired for the publicly visible reasons.
= = = = =
** Why I stopped: Комиссар С. Стамберг was interviewing some distinguished old historian. The historian said "When our forefathers designed the Constitution..." and Комиссар С. Стамберг sharply interrupted him: "Forepersons." The historian tried to fight back: "Well, I used the word forefathers because they were all male. It's a fact." Комиссар С. Стамберг gave him 20 loooooooooooong painful seconds of dead air, then switched to a different subject. I switched off NPR at that moment.
I've resumed listening in the last couple of years because NPR has become relatively unbiased (at least by comparison to the grotesquely insane cable channels) and because Комиссар С. Стамберг is no longer a major daily part of the broadcast. ¶ 3:05 AM
Until yesterday, the NPR mess stayed within the standard pattern. Juan Williams was fired for telling the truth about our Islamic enemies. Ron Schiller was fired for telling the truth about Jewish control of the media.
But now Vivian Schiller has been fired. Why? She hasn't done anything wrong by modern standards! Her public statements have been 100% false, and she was involved in firing the two truth-tellers, which is correct executive action.
Has she told the truth in a situation that isn't yet publicly known? Or does this indicate a slight return to sanity?
Evidence for the former: Commissar Susan Stamberg, who was the entire reason I stopped** listening to NPR in the '80s, has issued a strong указ against Comrade V. Schiller. Since Commissar S. Stamberg and Comrade V. Schiller are on the same team in all senses of the word, I have to assume Schiller is not being fired for the publicly visible reasons.
= = = = =
** Why I stopped: Комиссар С. Стамберг was interviewing some distinguished old historian. The historian said "When our forefathers designed the Constitution..." and Комиссар С. Стамберг sharply interrupted him: "Forepersons." The historian tried to fight back: "Well, I used the word forefathers because they were all male. It's a fact." Комиссар С. Стамберг gave him 20 loooooooooooong painful seconds of dead air, then switched to a different subject. I switched off NPR at that moment.
I've resumed listening in the last couple of years because NPR has become relatively unbiased (at least by comparison to the grotesquely insane cable channels) and because Комиссар С. Стамберг is no longer a major daily part of the broadcast. ¶ 3:05 AM
Wednesday, March 09, 2011
Roemer
Former Louisiana gov Buddy Roemer has thrown his hat into the ring. While maintaining full cynicism and skepticism about the possibility of any change at all, I must say his agenda sounds about right. Not the full-bore nationalism we need, but maybe close enough for an electable candidate. He undoubtedly has the right set of experience for a leader.
I've donated the max $100 to help him get underway. If nothing else, a strong anti-Wall Street candidate will pull the others in a good direction. ¶ 5:07 AM
I've donated the max $100 to help him get underway. If nothing else, a strong anti-Wall Street candidate will pull the others in a good direction. ¶ 5:07 AM
Tuesday, March 08, 2011
Backwards Brooks
David Brooks is pushing his new book. Basic thesis: we should stop treating humans as rational and logical creatures, and instead use some kind of fuzzy logic based on theories of ADHD and Autism Spectrum Disorders.
Emotionally avoidant? What the fuck is that? Scientology jargon? Shit.
Anyway, he's got the overall point backwards, but not quite 180 degrees backwards. Maybe 160.
Listen, Dave:
Our problem is NOT that we wrongly assume people to be rational.
We make two separate errors. In some cases we assume the wrong kind of rationality. In other cases we respond irrationally to a rationally definable problem.
Bankers are a good example of the first error. Bankers are the coldest, hardest, most purely logical creatures on earth. Like alligators, they have exactly one prime directive: EAT.
Alligators EAT anything that moves, bankers EAT anything that contains money.
When we assumed bankers could self-regulate, we were giving them credit for some level of morality, some kind of conscience. In other words, we were UNDERestimating their raw rationality. (Of course we were only saying that for public consumption. Phil Gramm knew exactly what he was doing. He was gleefully pouring the entire country into the alligator's mouth.)
A good example of the second error is crime and punishment. Professional criminals are innately different from non-criminals. Pro criminals are perfectly rational, capable of responding to incentives. Our court system applies the wrong incentives most of the time, thus getting the wrong result. [Note: I'm not talking here about incurable psychopaths, who are relatively rare. They won't respond to any incentives at all, so you just have to kill them or keep them locked up forever.]
Garden-variety professional criminals are short-term thinkers who need instant gratification, and they are intensely social extroverts.
If we truly wanted to punish them (in the Skinnerian sense of doing what actually decreases the undesirable behavior) we'd respond quickly to every crime and we'd isolate the criminals.
We should put them in dark solitary immediately after arrest, with no sensory input. A few months of total boredom will be a powerful learning experience. For novice criminals who haven't developed their vocation fully, an immediate and humiliating public spanking followed by a short isolation would do wonders.
Instead we respond with glacial slowness, with plenty of opportunities to game the system before "punishment"; and then we give them a nice vacation among their homies. We put them in a situation where they can socialize at will, maintain gang structures, practice techniques of violence without real danger, and get food without working.
These are irrational responses to the criminal's rational nature.
= = = = =
Brooks's view on education deserves a special spanking:
He's right about emotional state in general. Lasting memory requires a certain degree of emotional arousal, whether positive or negative. Good teachers have always understood this. But I have no idea what he means by "learning from people they love." We learn from experience and example. Experience and example can come from many sources: raw unmediated Nature, people you hate, people you love, people you don't know, computers. What matters is attention, arousal and repetition, not love.
The problem with our education system is ... Well, it's everything. We fail to apply ANY of the known facts about learning, or the known facts about human differences and innate abilities. We operate in direct contradiction to all known facts.
There's nothing new or irrational about the proper way to teach. You can see it in the New Testament, you can see it in the medieval master-apprentice system, you can see it in the one-room schoolhouse. Even within the modern Comprehensive Secondary School, a few magnificent teachers manage to fight the system and apply these techniques. These teachers generally survive and avoid wild-eyed insanity because they love their students, which may be where Brooks is picking up his connection ... but in a more rational system, good teaching wouldn't be so damn hard to sustain. It wouldn't be limited to these rare and passionate virtuosi. ¶ 5:39 AM
"When the Soviet Union fell, we sent all these economists into Russia, when what they really lacked was social trust," Brooks tells Robert Siegel on All Things Considered. "We invaded Iraq totally oblivious to the psychological trauma and the cultural realities of Iraq. We had financial regulatory policies based on the ideas that bankers were sort of rational creatures who would make smart decisions."
In Washington, D.C., which Brooks calls "the most emotionally avoidant city on Earth," Brooks notes that decisions are made based on the assumption that people are cold, rationalistic individuals who respond to incentives. Those assumptions didn't quite match what the research in other fields began to illustrate, however.
Emotionally avoidant? What the fuck is that? Scientology jargon? Shit.
Anyway, he's got the overall point backwards, but not quite 180 degrees backwards. Maybe 160.
Listen, Dave:
Our problem is NOT that we wrongly assume people to be rational.
We make two separate errors. In some cases we assume the wrong kind of rationality. In other cases we respond irrationally to a rationally definable problem.
Bankers are a good example of the first error. Bankers are the coldest, hardest, most purely logical creatures on earth. Like alligators, they have exactly one prime directive: EAT.
Alligators EAT anything that moves, bankers EAT anything that contains money.
When we assumed bankers could self-regulate, we were giving them credit for some level of morality, some kind of conscience. In other words, we were UNDERestimating their raw rationality. (Of course we were only saying that for public consumption. Phil Gramm knew exactly what he was doing. He was gleefully pouring the entire country into the alligator's mouth.)
A good example of the second error is crime and punishment. Professional criminals are innately different from non-criminals. Pro criminals are perfectly rational, capable of responding to incentives. Our court system applies the wrong incentives most of the time, thus getting the wrong result. [Note: I'm not talking here about incurable psychopaths, who are relatively rare. They won't respond to any incentives at all, so you just have to kill them or keep them locked up forever.]
Garden-variety professional criminals are short-term thinkers who need instant gratification, and they are intensely social extroverts.
If we truly wanted to punish them (in the Skinnerian sense of doing what actually decreases the undesirable behavior) we'd respond quickly to every crime and we'd isolate the criminals.
We should put them in dark solitary immediately after arrest, with no sensory input. A few months of total boredom will be a powerful learning experience. For novice criminals who haven't developed their vocation fully, an immediate and humiliating public spanking followed by a short isolation would do wonders.
Instead we respond with glacial slowness, with plenty of opportunities to game the system before "punishment"; and then we give them a nice vacation among their homies. We put them in a situation where they can socialize at will, maintain gang structures, practice techniques of violence without real danger, and get food without working.
These are irrational responses to the criminal's rational nature.
= = = = =
Brooks's view on education deserves a special spanking:
[Brooks says] people tend to be influenced by their underlying, unconscious emotional state, which is in turn influenced by the social relationships surrounding them. For example, Brooks has covered education reform for 20 years and writes that he has seen little improvement from multitudinous policy changes.
"The reality of education is that people learn from people they love. But if you mention the word love at a congressional hearing, they look at you like you're Oprah," he says.
He's right about emotional state in general. Lasting memory requires a certain degree of emotional arousal, whether positive or negative. Good teachers have always understood this. But I have no idea what he means by "learning from people they love." We learn from experience and example. Experience and example can come from many sources: raw unmediated Nature, people you hate, people you love, people you don't know, computers. What matters is attention, arousal and repetition, not love.
The problem with our education system is ... Well, it's everything. We fail to apply ANY of the known facts about learning, or the known facts about human differences and innate abilities. We operate in direct contradiction to all known facts.
There's nothing new or irrational about the proper way to teach. You can see it in the New Testament, you can see it in the medieval master-apprentice system, you can see it in the one-room schoolhouse. Even within the modern Comprehensive Secondary School, a few magnificent teachers manage to fight the system and apply these techniques. These teachers generally survive and avoid wild-eyed insanity because they love their students, which may be where Brooks is picking up his connection ... but in a more rational system, good teaching wouldn't be so damn hard to sustain. It wouldn't be limited to these rare and passionate virtuosi. ¶ 5:39 AM
Monday, March 07, 2011
Smart Kraut docs
German doctors have re-learned an old lesson with the help of some new research.
American doctors used to understand placebos. Consider this 1946 Fibber episode where Doc Gamble gives Fibber a "very special and powerful pill" along with precise instructions on how and when to take it, thus emphasizing its importance and power. Doc even names the pill as a Placebo, but Fibber is too uninformed to know the meaning. The show's writers assumed the audience would know the word better than Fibber did.
¶ 3:27 AM
German doctors have re-learned an old lesson with the help of some new research.
“Placebos have much stronger and more complex effects than we used to think. Their use is extremely important in medicine,” said Christoph Fuchs, managing director of the association, adding that pills and injections without active ingredients can be enormously beneficial to patients.
...About one in two doctors in Germany prescribes placebos on occasion. In Bavaria, a study found that 88 percent of general practitioners prescribe inactive drugs.
Often, doctors prescribe vitamin pills or homeopathic remedies that contain none of the medicine generally used to treat a specific illness. Some physicians even have "codes" understood by pharmacies who give patients sugar pills when filling prescriptions. ... What might appear as ethically dubious is actually often in the best interest of the patient. One study in Germany found that placebos helped 59 percent of patients with stomach ailments. With depression, placebos have the same effect as anti-depressants in about one-third of cases. In addition, placebos also carry none of the side-effects that genuine medicines often do.
American doctors used to understand placebos. Consider this 1946 Fibber episode where Doc Gamble gives Fibber a "very special and powerful pill" along with precise instructions on how and when to take it, thus emphasizing its importance and power. Doc even names the pill as a Placebo, but Fibber is too uninformed to know the meaning. The show's writers assumed the audience would know the word better than Fibber did.
¶ 3:27 AM
Strong immune response in France
France continues to gain strength in the face of the Modern Disease, continues to reassert its national culture against the enemy EU:
In Europe "right-wing" and "fascist" mean nothing more than "favors own nation over EU occupation". Pretty much the same way Stalin used "right-wing" and "fascist" to describe national loyalty in the countries he occupied.
In America we use "right-wing" to mean "serves Goldman Sachs openly and proudly", and "left-wing" to mean "serves Goldman Sachs quietly but just as effectively." We don't even have a word for political movements that favor the American people over the Gramscian occupation force. Imagining such a movement is Doublepluscrimethink. ¶ 3:05 AM
Marine Le Pen, the leader of France's far-right National Front party, would win the first-round of a presidential election if it were held today, a poll of French voters shows.
Le Pen took over the leadership of the National Front from her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, in January this year. A lawyer and twice-divorced mother-of-three, the bottle-blonde 42-year-old is as firmly right-wing as her predecessor.
In December she provoked outrage by suggesting that weekly closure of streets in French towns to allow Muslim prayers was "an occupation" in a speech which mentioned World War II.
The tactic is evidently working: the Harris poll suggested that Le Pen would get 23 per cent of the vote in a presidential election held today, with Sarkozy and Socialist Party leader Martine Aubry trailing with 21 per cent apiece.
In Europe "right-wing" and "fascist" mean nothing more than "favors own nation over EU occupation". Pretty much the same way Stalin used "right-wing" and "fascist" to describe national loyalty in the countries he occupied.
In America we use "right-wing" to mean "serves Goldman Sachs openly and proudly", and "left-wing" to mean "serves Goldman Sachs quietly but just as effectively." We don't even have a word for political movements that favor the American people over the Gramscian occupation force. Imagining such a movement is Doublepluscrimethink. ¶ 3:05 AM
Saturday, March 05, 2011
Language specimen: Narn
Professor Polistra, still waiting for new and annoying words, has nabbed another rare old specimen.
It was heard in this news clip from WXII TV in Greensboro, NC. The clip is about a new factory opening in Yadkin County, with 500 new jobs building plastic pieces for car bodies. Good for that area, especially good for men.
Three different dialects are heard in this short clip. A black female newscaster who speaks perfect Standard Broadcast English; a Chamber of Commerce type who speaks with a local sound but educated vocabulary; and an old white guy named Dwight Palmer who speaks pure old Appalachian. Mr Palmer was relieved to hear about the new factory:
"I got a grandson been lookin for jobs for two month. He ain't found narn yet."
Narn. Never heard that before. From the context it must mean 'nary one', and an online reference (an unanswered question in a linguistics forum) seems to verify the guess:
Prof P hears (or Mr Palmer pronounces) a slightly different vowel than this Mississippi-based description, but it's got to be the same old word, still holding on despite all modern encroachments.
= = = = =
Sidenote: Whole lotta pleonasm going on here.
Start from "nar'n a one". Expand it to "nary a one a one." The one in nar'n has been lost from view, requiring replacement by an explicit one.
Nary most likely comes from 'not any', later condensed to nany, followed by dissimilation of the two n's. [Possibly didn't require condensation; at one time the simple prefix n- was enough to create negation, as in willy nilly.]
Any comes from Anglo-Saxon ænig, roughly meaning 'one-ish'. Parallel to Spanish unos meaning some.
So "nar'n a one" expands fully to "Not one-ish a one a one", with each one successively condensed and requiring replacement by a new and explicit one.
Professor Polistra, still waiting for new and annoying words, has nabbed another rare old specimen.
It was heard in this news clip from WXII TV in Greensboro, NC. The clip is about a new factory opening in Yadkin County, with 500 new jobs building plastic pieces for car bodies. Good for that area, especially good for men.
Three different dialects are heard in this short clip. A black female newscaster who speaks perfect Standard Broadcast English; a Chamber of Commerce type who speaks with a local sound but educated vocabulary; and an old white guy named Dwight Palmer who speaks pure old Appalachian. Mr Palmer was relieved to hear about the new factory:
"I got a grandson been lookin for jobs for two month. He ain't found narn yet."
Narn. Never heard that before. From the context it must mean 'nary one', and an online reference (an unanswered question in a linguistics forum) seems to verify the guess:
This week I came across a usage that I've heard all my life, but I've
never had to spell before. I'm assuming it's a contraction of the longer
form "nary a one," and it's pronounced /nErn/ (well, actually there's a
retroflex schwa in there after that front mid lax vowel, not an /r/, but I
don't have an IPA font on this.) Sample usage:
"I had been to Camp Shelby and tried to get a job and I didn't get nar'n."
The most common way I remember hearing this growing up is: "tweren't nar'n."
Another person told me that he had always heard it "nar'n a one."
Prof P hears (or Mr Palmer pronounces) a slightly different vowel than this Mississippi-based description, but it's got to be the same old word, still holding on despite all modern encroachments.
= = = = =
Sidenote: Whole lotta pleonasm going on here.
Start from "nar'n a one". Expand it to "nary a one a one." The one in nar'n has been lost from view, requiring replacement by an explicit one.
Nary most likely comes from 'not any', later condensed to nany, followed by dissimilation of the two n's. [Possibly didn't require condensation; at one time the simple prefix n- was enough to create negation, as in willy nilly.]
Any comes from Anglo-Saxon ænig, roughly meaning 'one-ish'. Parallel to Spanish unos meaning some.
So "nar'n a one" expands fully to "Not one-ish a one a one", with each one successively condensed and requiring replacement by a new and explicit one.
Labels: Language update
¶ 8:34 PM
Hit and miss
NBC news did a hard-hitting report tonight on the troubled condition of American males, and they got everything right for once. Focusing visually on colleges where males are nearly absent, they ran through the situation from elementary school to jobs, showing that the deck is stacked against males at every stage. They brought out one fact that the Leninist media have conveniently skipped:
In the current recession, 78% of lost jobs are male jobs.
Bravo!
Then the next item was a near-miss on the same subject. Huckabee has apparently made a negative comment about some actress, calling some movie an insult to family values. NBC quite properly snapped Huck's hypocrisy: earlier he had called Bristol Palin's unmarried motherhood a prime example of Christianity.
Huck showed his party-hack colors brightly in the last election when he appeared to be a man of principle, gathered followers on that basis, then brazenly threw the game to Comrade McCain, Hero of Ho Chi-Minh. Huck no longer deserves to be taken seriously by anyone.
But in the ensuing discussion of problems supposedly caused by lack of marriage, NBC took the standard Republican/Democrat line. Non-marriage is a mysterious condition with no apparent cause, and non-marriage creates most of our social ills.
The correct causation is the other way around, and it's closely related to the previous article. Since 1970, feminists and financiers have conspired to eliminate the jobs that men were best qualified for, and to replace men by women in better-paying jobs. Black men were affected first, and now white men are in the same sinking boat. As their ability to provide for a family has disappeared, only males of raw physical beauty and brutality are still marriage material. The civilized reasons for marriage are gone, leaving only the primitive gonadal reasons.
The loss of marriage is caused by the loss of civilization. Republicans and Democrats must describe it backwards because Republicans and Democrats depend on feminists and financiers to keep their fraudulent circus running. ¶ 6:00 PM
In the current recession, 78% of lost jobs are male jobs.
Bravo!
Then the next item was a near-miss on the same subject. Huckabee has apparently made a negative comment about some actress, calling some movie an insult to family values. NBC quite properly snapped Huck's hypocrisy: earlier he had called Bristol Palin's unmarried motherhood a prime example of Christianity.
Huck showed his party-hack colors brightly in the last election when he appeared to be a man of principle, gathered followers on that basis, then brazenly threw the game to Comrade McCain, Hero of Ho Chi-Minh. Huck no longer deserves to be taken seriously by anyone.
But in the ensuing discussion of problems supposedly caused by lack of marriage, NBC took the standard Republican/Democrat line. Non-marriage is a mysterious condition with no apparent cause, and non-marriage creates most of our social ills.
The correct causation is the other way around, and it's closely related to the previous article. Since 1970, feminists and financiers have conspired to eliminate the jobs that men were best qualified for, and to replace men by women in better-paying jobs. Black men were affected first, and now white men are in the same sinking boat. As their ability to provide for a family has disappeared, only males of raw physical beauty and brutality are still marriage material. The civilized reasons for marriage are gone, leaving only the primitive gonadal reasons.
The loss of marriage is caused by the loss of civilization. Republicans and Democrats must describe it backwards because Republicans and Democrats depend on feminists and financiers to keep their fraudulent circus running. ¶ 6:00 PM
No! Not SMSG again!
Couple days ago I noted a remarkably positive development in math and science education right here in River City.
Now it appears that the broader trend is going backwards, returning to the idiotic academic shitstorm of the School [or Stanford] Math Study Group.
NPR reports:
Some of this sounds good. De-emphasizing the rote parts of arithmetic is good. Problem-solving never required that type of thinking, and now that calculators are free there's no reason to put a lot of effort into times tables. Much better to motivate the students, place them in situations where they have to solve a problem with math, and then let them 'discover' the needed methods in the context of the real problem.
But this doesn't sound like an emphasis on problem-solving. It sounds like a return to the idiotic academic definition of "elementary".
"Understanding the number system and understanding what numbers mean" sounds an awful lot like Set Theory and Number Theory. Those are called Elementary and Foundational by academics for arcane reasons, but they are NOT the way to start learning math and they are NOT the foundation of math understanding. If you start from these ideas you won't get anywhere.
I need to look up more about this trend, find out if it's really as awful as it sounds. ¶ 7:26 AM
Now it appears that the broader trend is going backwards, returning to the idiotic academic shitstorm of the School [or Stanford] Math Study Group.
NPR reports:
Computers do arithmetic for us, Devlin says, but making computers do the things we want them to do requires algebraic thinking. ...
"You cannot become good at algebra without a mastery of arithmetic," Devlin says, "but arithmetic itself is no longer the ultimate goal." Thus the emphasis in teaching mathematics today is on getting people to be sophisticated, algebraic thinkers.
That doesn't mean that kids can skip learning their multiplications tables. "But the way it's taught now is you get to the multiplication tables by understanding the number system and understanding what numbers mean," Devlin says.
Some of this sounds good. De-emphasizing the rote parts of arithmetic is good. Problem-solving never required that type of thinking, and now that calculators are free there's no reason to put a lot of effort into times tables. Much better to motivate the students, place them in situations where they have to solve a problem with math, and then let them 'discover' the needed methods in the context of the real problem.
But this doesn't sound like an emphasis on problem-solving. It sounds like a return to the idiotic academic definition of "elementary".
"Understanding the number system and understanding what numbers mean" sounds an awful lot like Set Theory and Number Theory. Those are called Elementary and Foundational by academics for arcane reasons, but they are NOT the way to start learning math and they are NOT the foundation of math understanding. If you start from these ideas you won't get anywhere.
I need to look up more about this trend, find out if it's really as awful as it sounds. ¶ 7:26 AM
Thursday, March 03, 2011
Who's the enemy? We're the enemy.
Major Nidal Hasan is being prepared for trial. He's charged with a bunch of murder counts, but NOT charged with anything related to treason or terrorism.
PFC Bradley Manning is being prepared for trial. He's charged with "aiding the enemy", which is not exactly the full definition of treason but close enough.
Hasan is openly and proudly working for the side that attacked America.
Manning (via Wikileaks) has not told our attackers anything they didn't already know, but he has told the American people a bunch of stuff we didn't already know.
Therefore:
Killing Americans on behalf of Islam is ordinary murder, not "aiding the enemy."
Informing the American public is "aiding the enemy."
Now we understand who's running DC. The side that attacked America. And we understand that DC's enemy is the same as Arabia's enemy. Their enemy is the American people.
This is 22-year-old news, of course, but it's always nice to be reminded with such crystal clarity. ¶ 6:52 PM
PFC Bradley Manning is being prepared for trial. He's charged with "aiding the enemy", which is not exactly the full definition of treason but close enough.
Hasan is openly and proudly working for the side that attacked America.
Manning (via Wikileaks) has not told our attackers anything they didn't already know, but he has told the American people a bunch of stuff we didn't already know.
Therefore:
Killing Americans on behalf of Islam is ordinary murder, not "aiding the enemy."
Informing the American public is "aiding the enemy."
Now we understand who's running DC. The side that attacked America. And we understand that DC's enemy is the same as Arabia's enemy. Their enemy is the American people.
This is 22-year-old news, of course, but it's always nice to be reminded with such crystal clarity. ¶ 6:52 PM
Trash talk
Paired symptoms of our modern terminal disease are securitization and centralization. Everything in the world must be commoditized so Goldman Sachs can make trillions and trillions and trillions and trillions by creating derivatives and options and swaps and option derivatives and option derivative futures and option derivative future swaps and future index swap option derivative option index share futures.
Our marvelous American talent for innovation, our constant invention of new financial crimes, cannot continue unless everything is first centralized. When mortgages remain strictly between the original bank and the borrower, Goldman can't chop them up into futures. When health care is strictly between the doctor and the patient, Goldman can't chop up the accounts receivable into futures. When electricity was generated in the City Power Plant and used solely by people in this City, Goldman couldn't chop the current into purchasable shares. And so ad infinitum.
However: Centralizing was already a strong trend before Goldman invented securitization, and centralizing continues to create absurdity and damage even where Goldman hasn't yet found a way to securitize.
A good recent example: the Conoco shipments from Japan to Montana, which were obstructed by hippie-ass commies until the Idaho state gov't finally laid down the law. The whole problem wouldn't have arisen if Conoco had chosen to build the refinery in the old localized way, shipping small plates and tubes from Pittsburgh via normal rail. Because they couldn't think outside the centralized box, they chose to hire a Jap company to build huge modules, which then required wildly complex and risky shipping plus armies of lawyers. The old way gives jobs to skilled American steelmakers, millwrights, welders and pipefitters; the new way gives jobs to Jap robots and American lawyers.
= = = = =
I was thinking lately about the central trend in trash collection.
Before EPA came along, trash was condensed and processed in several steps, with much more local participation.
I remember burning trash in the '50s and 60s. Each house had its own barrel, and each homeowner was responsible for getting it to the landfill one way or another. You could hire one of several companies to pick it up at various intervals, or you could take it to the landfill yourself. Nearly everyone chose the former, which made for lively competition among the carrier companies. The various intervals were possible because you burned your own trash often, daily or weekly, to reduce its volume, evaporate liquids, and kill germs. Other factors also helped to make the volume less than it is now: returnable glass bottles, milkmen, packaging made of paper and aluminum foil instead of plastic, no idiotic Designer Water. Even so, tin cans were pretty much irreducible and you did need to get rid of the mass now and then. (Sidenote: these older forms of packaging also had the advantage of using more local labor.)
When the trash reached the city dump, it was tossed into an open pit that was constantly smoldering, which reduced anything still combustible to plain carbon. Each section was plowed under when it had reached maximum compression, which enabled the soil bacteria to break it down further. What remained in the end was glass (ie silicon) plus a small residue of non-rustable metals like tin and aluminum. In other words, the earth reclaimed the minerals that had come from the earth.
After the marauding army called EPA occupied this unfortunate land, home trash-burning was first to go. Then landfills were required to take all sorts of idiotic and expensive precautions to prevent the trash from doing what trash is supposed to do. (Environmentalists cannot tolerate Nature taking care of itself!!!!!!!) So instead of being consumed by burning and microbes in the soil, the trash is now wrapped in specially made super-strong plastic and preserved forever in its original nasty and bulky condition.
This process is much more expensive, requires much more space, and requires an army of lawyers to keep up with EPA's constantly MARCHING MARCHING MARCHING STOMPING STOMPING STOMPING MURDERING MURDERING MURDERING jackboots. Thus it has become increasingly centralized.
Securitizing trash hasn't yet caught on widely, but the absurd "economy of scale" has already led to a Conoco-like shipping situation. Last year Hawaii couldn't figure out how to rewrite its own state laws to permit more material in the Honolulu landfill, or to create a new landfill anywhere in the state. Apparently there are no erasers or Delete keys in Hawaii. So they decided to ship their trash across the ocean and up the Columbia (just like the Conoco modules) to a rural landfill in central Wash that had extra space and liked the price. As with Conoco, hippie-ass envirotyrants intervened and ultimately stopped the shipment. And amazingly enough, Hawaii discovered that it could change its laws after all, could find a way to hold more garbage on the island.
I have mixed feelings in both of these situations, because I hate to see hippie-ass envirotyrants winning. Nevertheless, in these two cases the envirotyrants were accidentally on the right side by discouraging centralization!
= = = = =
Later news note: Even NASA, major cathedral of the genocidal Gaian cult, understands that sometimes you just have to burn the trash! Of course NASA's version of the trash barrel costs several million dollars....
¶ 6:40 PM
Our marvelous American talent for innovation, our constant invention of new financial crimes, cannot continue unless everything is first centralized. When mortgages remain strictly between the original bank and the borrower, Goldman can't chop them up into futures. When health care is strictly between the doctor and the patient, Goldman can't chop up the accounts receivable into futures. When electricity was generated in the City Power Plant and used solely by people in this City, Goldman couldn't chop the current into purchasable shares. And so ad infinitum.
However: Centralizing was already a strong trend before Goldman invented securitization, and centralizing continues to create absurdity and damage even where Goldman hasn't yet found a way to securitize.
A good recent example: the Conoco shipments from Japan to Montana, which were obstructed by hippie-ass commies until the Idaho state gov't finally laid down the law. The whole problem wouldn't have arisen if Conoco had chosen to build the refinery in the old localized way, shipping small plates and tubes from Pittsburgh via normal rail. Because they couldn't think outside the centralized box, they chose to hire a Jap company to build huge modules, which then required wildly complex and risky shipping plus armies of lawyers. The old way gives jobs to skilled American steelmakers, millwrights, welders and pipefitters; the new way gives jobs to Jap robots and American lawyers.
= = = = =
I was thinking lately about the central trend in trash collection.
Before EPA came along, trash was condensed and processed in several steps, with much more local participation.
I remember burning trash in the '50s and 60s. Each house had its own barrel, and each homeowner was responsible for getting it to the landfill one way or another. You could hire one of several companies to pick it up at various intervals, or you could take it to the landfill yourself. Nearly everyone chose the former, which made for lively competition among the carrier companies. The various intervals were possible because you burned your own trash often, daily or weekly, to reduce its volume, evaporate liquids, and kill germs. Other factors also helped to make the volume less than it is now: returnable glass bottles, milkmen, packaging made of paper and aluminum foil instead of plastic, no idiotic Designer Water. Even so, tin cans were pretty much irreducible and you did need to get rid of the mass now and then. (Sidenote: these older forms of packaging also had the advantage of using more local labor.)
When the trash reached the city dump, it was tossed into an open pit that was constantly smoldering, which reduced anything still combustible to plain carbon. Each section was plowed under when it had reached maximum compression, which enabled the soil bacteria to break it down further. What remained in the end was glass (ie silicon) plus a small residue of non-rustable metals like tin and aluminum. In other words, the earth reclaimed the minerals that had come from the earth.
After the marauding army called EPA occupied this unfortunate land, home trash-burning was first to go. Then landfills were required to take all sorts of idiotic and expensive precautions to prevent the trash from doing what trash is supposed to do. (Environmentalists cannot tolerate Nature taking care of itself!!!!!!!) So instead of being consumed by burning and microbes in the soil, the trash is now wrapped in specially made super-strong plastic and preserved forever in its original nasty and bulky condition.
This process is much more expensive, requires much more space, and requires an army of lawyers to keep up with EPA's constantly MARCHING MARCHING MARCHING STOMPING STOMPING STOMPING MURDERING MURDERING MURDERING jackboots. Thus it has become increasingly centralized.
Securitizing trash hasn't yet caught on widely, but the absurd "economy of scale" has already led to a Conoco-like shipping situation. Last year Hawaii couldn't figure out how to rewrite its own state laws to permit more material in the Honolulu landfill, or to create a new landfill anywhere in the state. Apparently there are no erasers or Delete keys in Hawaii. So they decided to ship their trash across the ocean and up the Columbia (just like the Conoco modules) to a rural landfill in central Wash that had extra space and liked the price. As with Conoco, hippie-ass envirotyrants intervened and ultimately stopped the shipment. And amazingly enough, Hawaii discovered that it could change its laws after all, could find a way to hold more garbage on the island.
I have mixed feelings in both of these situations, because I hate to see hippie-ass envirotyrants winning. Nevertheless, in these two cases the envirotyrants were accidentally on the right side by discouraging centralization!
= = = = =
Later news note: Even NASA, major cathedral of the genocidal Gaian cult, understands that sometimes you just have to burn the trash! Of course NASA's version of the trash barrel costs several million dollars....
¶ 6:40 PM
Not all is dark
By God, somebody is doing the right thing!
Teaching math and science the Russian way ... or in other words the pre-1910 American way. ABOUT GODDAMN TIME.
Incidentally, the Mead district has done all of this without new funding. They're losing revenue like almost everyone, even though they're gaining students. The gain of population is understandable... if I had a kid I'd find a way to get into the Mead district! ¶ 1:38 PM
Students in Raeleen Epperson’s and Carl Adams’ biomedical science classes at Mt. Spokane High School knew they were in for a different type of classroom experience from their first week of school. Their first assignment? Discover how Anna Garcia died.
“She had a bunch of stuff wrong with her,” said freshman Carly Frank. “It was this like, CSI unit, and we had to determine how she died.”
The innovative curriculum comes from Project Lead the Way a nonprofit curriculum development organization that promotes mathematics, engineering and engineering technology courses in K-12 schools.
When Assistant Superintendent Dan Butler heard about the biomedical science course, he knew he wanted to bring it to Mead schools. Three years ago the district introduced the organization’s engineering program.
That real world application is just one of the things that make the group’s courses unique. Frank said the class was given toxicology and autopsy reports as they tried to figure out what caused Anna Garcia’s death.
“We put a bunch of theories on poster boards and argued our case before the class,” she said.
To prepare teachers to implement the program, the group partners with universities to provide training and ongoing support. Locally, Washington State University has been named an affiliate, and Sylvia Oliver is WSU’s biomedical sciences Project Lead the Way affiliate director.
“As a trained biological scientist, I’m amazed by this curriculum,” Oliver said. “It’s not only rigorous – it’s relevant. It mimics what a regular workplace, research lab or doctor’s office is like.”
Health care is a huge employer in the Spokane area, making the addition of this curriculum even more timely. Butler said, “Seventy percent of our local workforce is around biomedicine.”
Teaching math and science the Russian way ... or in other words the pre-1910 American way. ABOUT GODDAMN TIME.
Incidentally, the Mead district has done all of this without new funding. They're losing revenue like almost everyone, even though they're gaining students. The gain of population is understandable... if I had a kid I'd find a way to get into the Mead district! ¶ 1:38 PM
